Douglas Carswell's Blog

Channel 4 Dispatches: MoD, defence protectionism and Michael Portillo

Michael Portillo made an extraordinary appearance on Channel 4 Dispatches last night.

He seemed to suggest he’d been against the ruinously expensive Eurofighter project as minister – but caved in to lobbying within a few months. So much for conviction politics, eh?

This might seem like a minor footnote to the sorry history of mid-1990s Tory policy disasters, but ponder the consequences.

If we’d spent the £20 billion we allocated to Eurofighter on less costly jet fighters, perhaps the £5 – 10 billion we’d have saved could have bought us a fleet of three or four aircraft carriers by now? Or several squadrons of drones? Or even more troops? 

I can understand all ministers who have served at that level making decisions that, with hindsight, they come to regret.  But what so struck me listening to Michael Portillo was the apparent lack of regret.  Indeed, he didn't seem even remotely embarrassed about the fact that he then joined the board of BAE Systems. 

Years of ministers allowing the wrong decisions to be made at MoD means that today we are reduced to salami-slicing what remains of our armed forces. We could instead be a formidable military power.  

Our decline can only be halted and reversed when – unlike Michael Portillo - ministers find the courage to take on the vested interests. And that will only happen when ministers accept that for all the talk of “sovereign capability”, defence protectionism diminishes British power.

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