For the first time, there was a flash of real anger from David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions today.
Cameron was questioning Gordon Brown about his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war:
Mr. Cameron: Following his evidence, one former Chief of the Defence Staff said that he was being “disingenuous” and another said that he was “dissembling”. Both those people worked with the Prime Minister—
From the Government benches, most particularly the area below the gangway occupied by the most hairy-knuckled members of the Labour awkward squad, came the cry: “Because they’re Tories!”
Cameron was incensed:
Mr. Cameron: Oh, it is because they are Tories, is it? That is what this tribalist, divisive Government think about people who serve our country. I think, first of all, the Prime Minister should get up and dissociate himself completely from what those people behind him have said.
But Brown didn’t dissociate himself from his backbenchers; how could he? In a few short weeks, after all, he will have to rely on the support of each and every one of them if he is to remain as leader of his party. He did, however, say that he had “never at any time criticised the patriotism of anybody who has been involved in the defence establishment of this country”, which wasn’t really the same thing.
Cameron then proceeded to criticise the Government for attempting “to fight two wars on a peacetime budget”.
Brown, in answer, contended that:
the defence budget has been rising every year. He might have had a complaint if we were cutting the defence budget every year, but it is rising every year.
This is a claim that the Prime Minister has made on several occasions, but it does not bear close scrutiny. As a proportion of GDP, government spending on defence has fallen by almost half over the last two decades. Last, week, Ian Godden, chairman of ADS, the UK’s defence trade organisation, commented:
“Any criticism of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) must be seen in the light of the defence budget having fallen from 4.4 per cent of GDP 20 years ago to 2.3 per cent today while many other departmental budgets have continued to grow. The MoD has been given an insufficient budget by the Treasury with which to support our armed forces during a period of increased operational commitments.”
It is difficult to think of any greater insult that Gordon Brown could offer our armed forces than to contend that defence spending has increased when, as a proportion of our national income, it has in fact significantly declined.
Apart, of course, from allowing the integrity of their commanders to be gratuitously traduced by his own backbenchers.
Are the top brass in the military a load of liars? It appears that the Prime Minister believes that they are based on what he says.
It appears to me that he and Cabinet members can say what they like in support of any issue that they wish to defend.
We the public have to swallow what we are told even if we think the opposite. We have no way of checking if what is said is true and there seems to be no true way of holding people to account.That of course is the job of Opposition parties but even so one has to ask if they are just sounding off to win votes.
The attitude “we are the Government and what we say is the truth” seems to pervade in all enquiries. The whole issue of what is said in the House of Commons seems to outsiders to be a sorry mess.
Not forgetting of course that the first 7 years of the two decades you referred to were under a Tory Government and that Cameron admitted that the defence budget had fallen in that period.
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Correct; because Britain was reaping the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War.
Brown’s refusal to increase spending came when the country was again at war.