What is meant by the departure of Sir Jock Stirrup and Sir Bill Jeffrey?
Their inability to work with a Secretary of State who appoints a foreign agent of a foreign intelligence agency as his Special Adviser?
The removal of, in Sir Jock, the principal obstacle to the implementation of the longstanding neoconservative scheme to abolish the Royal Air Force?
The acceleration of moves towards the neocons' single EU defence "capability" under overall American command but day-to-day German (or, with Sarkozy in place, possibly French) control, one to take up with the Armed Forces Minister, Nick Harvey, the only Lib Dem to vote against Maastricht?
Is Liam Fox's neocon MoD becoming as difficult for William Hague's increasingly Tory FCO as Vince Cable's Business Department is for George Osborne's Treasury?
Or could it be - dare we hope, especially in view of the Prime Minister's remarks this week? - that the date of Sir Jock's and Sir Bill's departure is also the date, more-or-less or even exactly, of our withdrawal from Afghanistan?
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Even if you are right, these sackings are the beginning of the end of Fox. You don't do this. Maybe we'll get Nick Harvey in return for a Tory somewhere else such as filling Cable's place if he goes to the IMF. Shame Tim Garden is dead, he would have made a wonderful coalition minister in the MoD.
ReplyDeleteHe would have been. But there would be no selling to the Tory faithful the loss of the position of Secretary of State for Defence.
ReplyDeleteAssuming an internal promotion, I don't know about Peter Luff, but Gerald Howarth is late of the European Arab Bank, Andrew Robathan has been on his travels courtesy of CMEC (Nicholas Soames, Hugo Swire, Crispin Blunt, Alan Duncan, Commons receptions to celebrate Norouz, you get the idea), and Lord Astor is actually Vice-Chairman of CMEC.
No wonder Fox feels the need for Luke Coffey to keep him company. Cameron has effectively given him a team of warders. Swire, Blunt and Duncan are also Ministers, while Ken Clarke and Andrew Lansley are in the Cabinet.
This Government is going to be just awful domestically, though no worse than the other lot would have been if they had won. But foreign policy looks like being a whole other story. No wonder that certain persons not unknown to this blog are so angry.