Who Is Hunting Fox?

Is it the people with whom the far more traditionally Tory David Cameron and William Hague have encircled him at the MoD? Apart from the Lib Dem Eurosceptic Nick Harvey, more than on record against Trident, I do not 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 CMEC's Vice-Chairman. Or is it Luke Coffey, and thus indicative of the realist renaissance and resurgence within American intelligence? Both, one trusts.

Still, be in no doubt. Fox and his CIA SpAd have a much-trailed scheme to abolish all three Armed Forces in favour of something like the United States Marine Corps, except in no sense an elite force, as part of the single EU defence "capability" under overall American command. It should never be forgotten that an absolute ban on Germany's having an Air Force was written into the Treaty of Versailles. To be deprived of this right by one's vanquishers is one of the great historic indicators that defeat has tipped over into humiliation.

But back in the days when New Labour was led by Tony Blair and the other lot by Michael Howard, deeply disillusioned former Cabinet Ministers from both sides implored me not to write, even in jest, that our most unaccomplished 16-year-olds should be conscripted directly into the Israeli Defence Force, on the grounds that "if the wrong person reads that, then it will happen". They were not joking. (I was later informed that, entirely independently, something very near to that IDF scheme had been seriously considered within the Blair inner circle. That was how far beyond satire things had moved in the last days of Tony Blair.) That, at least, will not happen under Liam Fox. Progress of a sort, perhaps. And it certainly will not happen under whoever is being lined up as his successor.