All At Sea

I rather warmed to Lord West when he came out against banging people up for months on end without so much as charging them, whatever he might have been forced to say thereafter.

The Armed Forces swear and owe allegiance, not to the government of the day, but to the Queen, i.e., to our permanent constitution of liberties under the Crown rather than citizens’ obligations to the State. Old Labour and the Old Tories understood this, and shared it. But New Labour and the New Tories do not.

However, there are mounting signs that he is going native. And who can blame him? Unlike the Police, the Armed Forces live, even if quite necessarily, very much in their own little world. There is nothing wrong with Ministers who have Forces experience, but we really should be very wary of Ministers who have never done anything else.