Cameron Outfoxing

Liam Fox's appointment was only ever a temporary concession to social climbing Rightism. But most people really did expect him to last a bit longer than this. The knives are out, and we all know who has been sharpening them.

Oh, well, off he goes soon enough with his CIA SpAd and his much-trailed scheme to abolish all three Armed Forces in favour of something like the United States Marine Corps, as part of the single EU defence "capability" under overall America command but day-to-day German control, as advocated by the Henry Jackson Society back when there was such a thing. The dramatic, though always inevitable, reassertion of public opinion in Germany has in any case put paid to that one, as to so very many other things.

I hope that Fox enjoys explaining this scheme to the readers of the Sun column that will doubtless be his Blunkett-like platform in the near future. He might even mention, not only how silly it is to bang on that "the USMC is larger than all three British Armed Forces put together", but also that it is by no stretch of the imagination its country's only Armed Service. It would make an unsuitable repository for the boys who left school with absolutely nothing and who were to be turned into cannon fodder for one or both of two foreign powers.

An email asks why I think that saving the RAF, as such, is quite so important. Well, I think that saving each of the three, as such, is vitally important. But 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.