Douglas Carswell's Blog

Defence and national decline

We must, it seems, spend precious £Billions on two aircraft carriers. Canceling them, we're told, would be more expensive than going ahead.

Says who?

The muppets at MoD who negotiated the contract? The contractors with a commercial stake in it? Or the defence lobbyists who infest Whitehall and Westminster?

It seems the one group of people who aren't in a position to judge for themselves if the too-costly-to-cancel argument holds, are the MPs you voted for in May. Conveniently for anyone with a vested interest in the continuation of this contract, it's kept under wraps.

So yet again, the too-costly-to-cancel argument, used time and again to perpetuate defence procurement madness, is wheeled out.

We persist in building aircraft carriers without aircraft.  One we plan to mothball. The other will need its own fleet to protect it. And in return, we get to have no carrier capability whatever for a decade. Not very strategic, is it?

The construction of a carrier we do not intend to ever use illustrates the extent to which the defence budget is being spent in the interests of certain contractors, rather than in the interests of our defence?      

Thus does the power of vested interests sap the power of Britain.  It doesn't have to be like this. But it is.

Perhaps this is the sort of thing that happens to all declining powers?

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