Flat-tops

A timely article on the government’s commitment to two new aircraft carriers in the FT. Michael Quinlan writes:

” The defence budget is in deeper trouble than at any time since Labour came to power. But so are the general public finances, so the Treasury will not come to the rescue. In such situations, squeeze-and-postpone never suffices. Nettles have to be grasped – the sooner, the better.”

This follows an article in the latest edition of The Economist on Rusty Lusty, HMS Illustrious, and the “hollowing out of the navy as defence spending becomes tighter”. The stark facts are

“Such ambitions come at a cost. The new carriers have enlarged an already big hole in the defence budget. Despite plans to increase real expenditure by 1.5% a year, defence sources say there is an “eye-watering” shortfall of £500m next year, rising to about £2 billion in 2011-12. On February 20th service chiefs and civil servants will try to agree on a savings plan for approval by Des Browne, the double-hatted secretary for defence and for Scotland. Budgeting involves grim inter-service fighting at the best of times, but the current round is the toughest in decades. About £2 billion must be taken out of the £12 billion annual equipment budget over the next two years in order to balance the books while paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and improving soldiers’ pay and conditions.

Britain is still fighting two wars on peacetime budgets. It needs to decide whether to increase defence spending to match its global ambitions or accept the permanent loss of some military capabilities. Instead, to put off the reckoning, ministers will probably delay the new carriers by a year or more, chop a few more ships and submarines, push back new transport aircraft, downgrade future armoured vehicles and skimp on maintenance.

All this distorts the military posture. It creates an even bigger hole in the budget from 2010, sucks out funds to keep old kit going, increases the unit costs of delayed and reduced future equipment, and penalises those at the end of the procurement pipeline. On current plans, for example, the air force is taking full delivery of 232 Typhoon jets, but it is doubtful that Britain will buy the 150 JSFs it would like.”

I have just finished Nemesis, Max Hastings’ account of the final year of the war against Japan. By the start of that final year the great carrier engagements were history, but Nimitz’s fleet carrier task forces played a key role in interdicting Japan’s seaborne trade and supporting US forces on the ground. What is clear, however, is that the flat-tops required enormous logistic support and each task force was exactly that: a fleet carrier and a retinue of destroyer radar pickets, anti-submarine frigates and more and more. 60 years on, what has changed, other than the fact that the chances of our being engaged in global war is remote; instead we fight asymmetric wars where carriers are most unlikely to play a decisive role.

The last word should perhaps be from Michael Quinlan:

“Defence planning has to make choices that limit what we can do. But with direct military threat a remote possibility, almost everything we take on far from home is ultimately optional. Do big carriers give us choices that other forces do not and that are wide, important and likely to warrant the costs? Carriers are an expensive way of providing a modest amount.

Carriers are an expensive way of providing a modest amount of air power. Like all forces, they have limitations. They are more vulnerable than airfields and harder to repair after damage, even if not sunk. Against serious opposition much of their effort goes into defending themselves, and they need a protective entourage. Even then, a single carrier is at severe risk within range of enemy air power (or missiles, or submarines). It cannot give much if any support if the operational theatre is deep inland. Two carriers cannot guarantee, as a basis for political commitment, the timely availability of one in the right place. A distinguished admiral has said that there is a case for three or none, but not two.”

How hard is it to say sorry?

Leaving aside the fact that in private I tend to say sorry rather too often (a failing I apparently share with the majority of Englishmen of my age and background: probably early Prep school trauma), in the world of work my early bosses were committed exponents of the “Never explain, never apologise” school. I have always tended to favour the opposite, reckoning that my clients would prefer me to put up my hands if something has gone wrong. The complicating factor, at least for lawyers, is that professional indemnity insurers have their own take on this subject (veering very much more to the somewhat more robust approach of my first employers) and equate sorry to an admission of liability. The trick is to find a way of saying sorry, meaning it and not losing cover. In yesterday’s FT there was an excellent article by Stefan Stern, Say sorry and mean it – or don’t say anything at all. In the right context, saying sorry is a very powerful statement. As Stern notes:

Genuine apologies disarm opponents, win new friends and help you hang on to old ones. In business, when necessary, bosses should apologise sincerely and quickly, or not at all.

This is certainly true of clients. The danger is saying sorry in such a way that it is quite clear you either aren’t, or worse are saying it because you have to (train managers on First Great Western). Perhaps the only thing worse is when it is a pre-recorded announcement (next time you are waiting for a late train, listen hard!).

A father’s grief

Listening to Mohammed Al Fayed, one’s first reaction is that the man is mad. You only have to read the report on the BBC News website. But the man is mad with grief: “Those who mourn may mimic madness to the observer’s eye” [Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, in Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. xiv (1914 – 16), (Hogarth)]. He wants the world to know what he thinks is the truth, but my only feeling is that there is something almost indecently voyeuristic in the reporting of the Diana inquest, and in our obsession with the events of a decade ago. Enough truly is enough: it is not the cost, the huge fees being earned by people who should know better, the titillation, the toe-curling revelations from the likes of Paul Burrell. It is, rather, seeing a deeply unsympathetic character, the pantomime villain, gripped by a madness that there but for the grace of God each one of us may suffer.

Darling won’t use the N-word

After the rumours, final confirmation this afternoon that even though Alistair Darling was unable to bring himself to use the N-word, Northern Rock has been taken into public ownership. The Chancellor was at pains to stress that the Government’s intention is that this should be temporary ownership only, and that deposits and savings will “remain safe and secure”. In his post The nationalisation of Northern Rock on Coffee House, Peter Hoskin asks whether we can really trust the Government to run a bank. George Osborne certainly does not think so. According to the FT he told Sky News:

“We have had months of dithering and delays and ended up in the catastrophic position, on a Sunday afternoon, of the chancellor announcing this decision to nationalise Northern Rock. They have dithered for months and months trying to create a private sale that was never really there.’’

Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper on the Channel 4 News was far from convincing in her support of the embattled Chancellor. This story has legs. If you were thinking that Alistair Darling’s reputation for competence was damaged by the non-dom ‘crisis’ then the Northern Rock debacle will bury it.

Another betrayal of trust

Another reason for disliking Gordon Brown. Watching Friday’s BBC News on the coroner’s inquest into the death in action of Captain James Philippson in Helmand Province, I was most struck by the juxtaposition of a film of a grinning Gordon Brown meeting troops in Afghanistan, and the interview with Anthony Philippson, Captain Philippson’s father. According to the BBC, Mr Philippson said,

“He [the coroner] laid into them [the MoD] particularly badly for the lack of equipment. I do hold the MoD responsible for James’ death but it is not just the MoD, it goes much deeper than that. The Treasury and the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, will be really to blame for what happened. The MoD was starved of cash by the Chancellor”.

He was in fact far ruder about Gordon Brown, and the written report on the BBC website not only doesn’t give any feel of Mr Philippson’s cold fury, but edited some of it out. What he actually said (and the video is on the BBC website) was:

“It’s not just the Ministry of Defence, it’s the Treasury and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, our present Prime Minister, the miserable, parsimonious Mr Brown. He’s really the person responsible for what happened.”

When recording a narrative verdict in which he said Captain Philippson was unlawfully killed, Mr Walker, the assistant coroner for Oxford said:

“They [the soldiers] were defeated not by the terrorists but by the lack of basic equipment. To send soldiers into a combat zone without basic equipment is unforgivable, inexcusable and a breach of trust between the soldiers and those who govern them.”