Defence on the back burner? - by Richard... Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Defence on the back burner? - by Richard... Wednesday, May 12, 2010

It is interesting to note that the "strong and stable government" foreseen by the Cleggeron coalition agreement does not run to dealing with the vital area of defence, other than brief statements about the future of Trident and the need for a strategic defence review.

As Think Defence points out, in the 3,000 published words of the agreement we get a commitment to make possession of illegal timber a criminal offence but nothing about Afghanistan, that very same Afghanistan where thousands of UK service personnel are currently in harm's way, where we are fighting and losing a war and where billions of pounds are draining into the desert sands.

Defence, we are told, will be followed "in due course" by a final Coalition Agreement, which hardly suggests the degree of urgency that the Cleggeron leaders have sought to imply is necessary.

Given that neither of the parties have had anything intelligent to say about the strategic situation in Afghanistan, it is perhaps unsurprising that they have failed to rise to the occasion now, leaving Liam Fox, as newly-appointed secretary of state for defence, to attempt something approaching a coherent policy.

This has not stopped the Tory defence team in the past being heavily critical of Labour efforts, but with Fox now in the hot seat, it is time for him to deliver. Relegating the issue of Afghanistan to the second-tier coalition agreement is not a good start. We need something more than that – and fast.

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And even worser - by Richard...

Edict #2701 from the Cleggeron High Command is set to abolish parliamentary democracy.

In a change from current procedures, where a government may be defeated in the Commons by a single vote majority, the Cleggerons are introducing the concept of an "enhanced majority". In future, the votes of 55 percent of MPs are required before a vote of no confidence can succeed.

By such means, the Cleggerons are locking themselves into power for the next five years – until May 2015. "This is a five-year arrangement," says the Supreme Leader: "... so much better than the alternative." "A political revolution is under way," says the state broadcasting apparatus. A political coup, more like it.

A dictatorship is thus born ... but it will be short-lived. The real world is rapidly catching up on these clowns. At least it will save us the trouble of having to shoot them. When this little lot catches up with them, they will be beaten to death by the mob.

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And worser - by Richard...

Cleggeron High Command has announced the appointment of Kenneth Clarke as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, and Theresa May as Home Secretary and minister for women and equality.

A further communiqué is being translated. 

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It gets worse - by Richard...

With the appointment if Chris Huhne as energy and climate change secretary, the "not-the-Conservative Party" has morphed into the "not-the-Conservative government". 

The unelected leader of the unelected Cleggerons is to announce more appointments today. Already, he has confirmed that former News of the World editor, the unelected Andy Coulson, will be the voice of the Cleggerons. His first message is being prepared. 

The unelected foreign secretary Mr Hague confirmed that the High Command intends to introduce fixed-term parliaments, with – he says - the next election to be held on the first Thursday of May 2015.

That is, of course, unless the whole damn edifice collapses before then, which can't come soon enough.

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"We have ... to rebuild trust" - by Richard...

So, the leader of the Cleggerons (now with his own website - cleggerons.com) beams into No 10 after all. I got that wrong – totally and completely. I never thought that a Conservative Party could make a formal alliance with the Libdims. But then, I should have remembered that this is the "not-the-Conservative Party".

Bizarrely, it seems, it was Brown's own parliamentary party which rejected the idea of a Lib-Lab pact, MPs and ministers attacking it as a bad idea that was always doomed to failure. Hence, once negotiations started up, the Lib-Dim delegation got the bum's rush and went rushing back to the bosom of the Tories. 

This gave The Boy his victory, gained not through his own negotiating skills or his "success" at the ballot box but handed to him on a plate by the Labour party which still has some residual scruples.

Not so the "not-the-Conservative Party", which then had the Cleggeron leader in his first speech telling us, "One of the tasks we have is to rebuild trust in the political system". As leader of an unnatural, unelected coalition – which has not yet declared the terms of its coalition – he has to be freekin' joking.

Just to add to the joke, little Georgie Osborne is chancellor of the exchequer. Hague is foreign secretary ... to join the unelected prime minister. That, we are told, should reassure the party. And the cleggie as deputy prime minister has yet to be confirmed.

And so it all starts. It is some 70 years since we last saw a coalition government, set up as Hitler launched "Operation Yellow" on the mainland, an operation which was to culminate in our retreat to Dunkirk and evacuation, and the start of the Battle for Britain. How things have changed. Then, we were reliant on the "few". Now, one might say, never in the field of human endeavour is so little owed by so many to so few.

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