Category Archives: Bob Ainsworth

Helmand is no Workington

Posted on December 24, 2009 | Leave a comment

Only two months after Bob Ainsworth’s embarrassing U-turn on TA training, the Times this morning reveals that the Ministry of Defence has cancelled dozens of training exercises in an attempt to cut costs and was obliged to withdraw from a major Nato exercise, Bold Avenger 09.

The reasonable – and remarkably restrained – comment by Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, that: “The Government must reassure the Armed Forces that these cuts will not have any impact on their readiness for current operations or to respond to the unexpected” has provoked an accusation of “scaremongering” from Bill Rammell, the Armed Forces Minister:

“Any suggestion that Service personnel are not ready to respond to the unexpected is nonsense, as was seen in the fast and effective response to the flooding in the North of England last month.”

Maybe I’m missing the point; or perhaps Mr Rammell is.  The Army undoubtedly did a wonderful job in Cumbria, but, as I would have thought it unnecessary to observe, Workington is a bit different from Helmand.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Bob Ainsworth

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An avoidable disaster

Posted on October 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

Nothing better exemplifies the ineptitude of this decaying Government than its handling of the Territorial Army training issue.

Faced with a strongly pro-military national sentiment, when thousands of British troops are serving in Afghanistan and many are wounded and losing their lives, Gordon Brown and Bob Ainsworth decided it was a good idea to do a bit of cheese-paring and save the relatively small sum of £20 million by cutting the TA’s training budget.

The fact that they made the decision is itself astonishing, but what beggars belief is that they clearly didn’t anticipate the storm of outrage it generated.  It was wholly predictable that serving members of the TA, their families and comrades’ associations would be appalled at the prospect of TA soldiers being subject to possible deployment to Afghanistan without proper training. 

It took John Reid, a former Defence Secretary, to tell Gordon Brown just how daft an idea it was.  No doubt Mr Reid was characteristically forthright in the terms of his advice.

Now the Prime Minister has climbed down, but has been left to look weak, indecisive and foolish.  An utter disaster for him and his Government, and one that was entirely avoidable.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Bob Ainsworth, Gordon Brown, John Reid

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Send Joyce to the gulag

Posted on September 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

The Telegraph today reports on the allegation, first raised in yesterday’s Mail, that senior Labour party figures conspired to smear the new Chief of the General Staff, Sir David Richards, on the ground that his daughter works as an aide to David Cameron.

According to the Telegraph, the proposed campaign against General Richards was one of the principal reasons for Eric Joyce’s resignation last week as PPS to Bob Ainsworth, the woefully inept Defence Secretary.

“So what’s new?” one might wonder.  We know that at least one Labour minister was suspected of plotting a smear campaign against General Richards’s predecessor, Sir Richard Dannatt.  To smear General Richards would simply be business as usual.

Well, what is new is the reaction of Kevan Jones, the junior defence minister  who has been fingered by various bloggers, including Guido, as the instigator of the plot against General Dannatt.  Jones has denied the accusation and, since Ainsworth lacks sufficient leadership to hold an inquiry into the issue, we must naturally accept his word.

However, Jones’s response to the latest allegation is, frankly, disgraceful.  This is how the Telegraph reports it:

Mr Jones insisted that he had never been present at a meeting attended by Mr Joyce at which Sir David’s daughter was discussed and denied any smear campaign.

“Unfortunately Eric Joyce is getting into the realms of fantasy now, he has clearly had a lot of stress after his resignation,” he said.

“The only meetings (in the MoD) that he attended that I am aware of were political meetings and at none of them was it ever discussed about smearing anybody.”

The suggestion, clearly, is that Joyce, a former serving army officer, is so incapable of handling the little emotional upset of his resignation that he has become delusional.

Attributing mental illness to political dissidents was, of course, a textbook technique of the regime in the former Soviet Union.  It is distressing to see that it has now apparently been adopted by the British Labour party.

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Posted in Bob Ainsworth, Labour Party

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Joyce: first shot of an autumn coup?

Posted on September 3, 2009 | 1 Comment

The resignation of Eric Joyce, PPS to the Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, will undoubtedly be a severe blow to Gordon Brown, coming, as it does, on the eve of a speech the PM is to make on the war in Afghanistan. 

Given that Joyce is a former major in the Black Watch, his criticism of the conduct of the war must be taken seriously.

Even more devastating, perhaps, is his condemnation of Labour smears of senior officers, including the recently-retired Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt:

“Behind the hand attacks by any Labour figure on senior service personnel are now, to the public, indistinguishable from attacks on the services themselves.

“We must make it clear to every serviceman and woman, their families and the British public, that we give their well-being the highest political priority.”

This, in reality, amounts to a criticism of his former boss, Bob Ainsworth, who clearly knows, or at least  strongly suspects, which of his ministers was responsible for the attack on Sir Richard, but who, so far, hasn’t had the guts to do anything about it.

Ultimately, however, it must be Gordon Brown who is quaking.  He will not forget that it was a revolt by Brownite junior ministers and parliamentary aides  that instigated the overthrow of Tony Blair. 

Could Joyce’s resignation be the first shot of an autumn coup directed at  Brown’s own leadership?

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Posted in Bob Ainsworth, Gordon Brown, Labour Party

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Ainsworth must act over smears

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 1 Comment

Richard DannattAllegations that Labour politicians have conducted a campaign to smear Sir Richard Dannatt, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff, continue to grow.

The Telegraph reported last month that some Labour MPs are preparing moves to tarnish the general’s reputation once he leaves office, in retribution for his criticism of the Government’s failure to provide adequate resources for the troops in Afghanistan.  One minister allegedly said at the time that Sir Richard would be “fair game” in retirement.

Today, the Times reports that a junior defence minister discussed “chasing” Sir Richard over his entertainment expenses:

Requests were allegedly made under the Freedom of Information Act, with the backing of the unnamed minister, to find out the extent of entertaining by General Dannatt, who retires as Chief of the General Staff next week.

Although the Ministry of Defence denied the accusations, an authoritative insider told The Times that he knew that a minister had spoken about using the general’s expenses claims to provide ammunition for negative stories. It was also alleged that a minister had called General Dannatt a “complete bastard”.

The insider said that the minister was “p***** off” with General Dannatt for making so many public statements critical of the resources given to the troops in Afghanistan.

Guido has already openly accused the Veterans minister, Kevan Jones, of organising the smear campaign.  Jones, however, has flatly denied it, saying:

“He is without doubt a man of strong views and I cannot say we have not had our differences. But I totally respect him and the way he cares so utterly about the men and women who serve under him.”

On the assumption that Jones is telling the truth, which we must accept in the absence of contrary evidence, that leaves four other junior defence ministers in the frame.  We know that Bob Ainsworth, the hapless Defence Secretary, has already written to all his junior ministers warning them not to brief against Sir Richard, so he must have a suspicion as to which one of them is behind the campaign.

Even Mr Ainsworth must by now recognise that this grubby affair is doing nothing whatever for the reputation of the MoD.  A visit to the Army Rumour Service forum will reveal how badly it is going down among serving personnel. 

Mr Ainsworth should therefore immediately carry out an inquiry into the Times’s allegations and publish his findings.  The exercise could be completed in no more than a day or two.  If a minister is shown to have behaved in the way alleged, he or she should be required immediately to resign.

Sadly, given Mr Ainsworth’s performance to date, I doubt whether he will do anything of the kind. The issue will probably be allowed to continue to fester, leaving a cloud over the MoD, the innocent ministers and Mr Ainsworth himself.

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Posted in Bob Ainsworth, Sir Richard Dannatt

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Open rebellion

Posted on August 3, 2009 | 1 Comment

gordonbrownIf open rebellion hasn’t yet broken out within the Parliamentary Labour party, it is fair to say that barricades are being manned – or, in the case of Harriet Harman, personned. 

It was Harriet herself who threw the fat in the fire yesterday by stridently demanding that a female MP should always form part of the Labour leadership team.  That provoked a pretty blunt response from John Prescott, who berated her roundly in his blog:

I know you don’t choose the headlines. But you did choose the words in the interview.

You said: “I don’t agree with all male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s thoroughly bad to have a men-only leadership.”

Quotes like this just raise leadership issues once again just at a time when we should all be pulling together and defending our record.

But Harriet in the meantime has opened up a campaign on a second front by falling out with Peter Mandelson, who apparently refused to discuss her proposals for extended maternity leave at the recent cabinet awayday in Cardiff. 

Mandelson and Harman are apparently taking it in turns to mind the shop during Gordon Brown’s absence on holiday, an arrangement that appears only to have added to the friction that exists between the two.

Eric Joyce’s implicit reference to his boss, Bob Ainsworth, as “politically bonkers” has also stirred up a hornets’ nest.  One unnamed minister said that Joyce should be “toast” for his insubordination, but Joyce remains stubbornly and embarrassingly in situ.

Meanwhile, Alan Johnson’s protestations that he is unable to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States because to do so would be illegal have been undermined by his former deputy leadership rival, Peter Hain, who last night criticised the way the Government had handled the case, asserting that it should have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider possible charges in a “British context”.

It doesn’t look good; in fact, it looks awful.

And while all this mayhem is breaking out, there is nary a word from Downing Street, not a squeak from Gordon Brown, who sits, brooding, somewhere in the Lake District, while what little was left of his authority is publicly, comprehensively and humiliatingly shredded.

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Posted in Bob Ainsworth, Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman, Labour Party, Peter Hain

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Ainsworth should call it a day

Posted on August 3, 2009 | 2 Comments

Bob AinsworthEric Joyce MP, Parliamentary private secretary to Bob Ainsworth, currently Secretary of State for Defence, has added his voice to the chorus calling for the Government to abandon its appeal against the compensatory awards made to Corporal Anthony Duncan and Royal Marine Matthew McWilliams

Writing in Scotland on Sunday, Mr Joyce, a former army major, has described the decision to appeal as “profoundly wrong” and “politically bonkers”; in both respects, he is entirely right.

Such off-message criticism from an aide would normally be expected to result in instant dismissal; however, the MoD has told the BBC that Mr Joyce’s job is not in jeopardy.  One must consequently infer that Mr Ainsworth regards it as fair criticism, an inference supported by the fact that he has already ordered a review of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme to be brought forward.

I therefore repeat the question, not wholly rhetorical: why, in the circumstances, is Mr Ainsworth not instructing his lawyers to abandon the appeal proceedings with immediate effect?

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The one and only Bob Ainsworth

Posted on July 31, 2009 | Leave a comment

Bob AinsworthThe remarkably Eeyorish Bob Ainsworth, who is still Secretary of State for Defence, has today given a suitably defensive interview to the Telegraph.

After admitting that Labour did not do enough to support troops on the front line in the first years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – which I am sure will go down really well in Downing Street – Mr Ainsworth answers the accusation that he is not up to the job of running the Ministry of Defence:

A civilian with no direct experience of military service, he said he could bring a “unique dimension” to the job of Defence Secretary.

“I don’t try to second guess decisions that are quite properly taken in the military chain of command. I don’t try to pretend I am cleverer than a general or the Chief of the Defence Staff,” he said. “But I can bring something else, a knowledge and understanding of Parliament, and of civilian life.”

With enormous respect to Mr Ainsworth, “knowledge of civilian life” would not appear to be one of the more compelling qualifications for being put in charge of the nation’s defences.

Furthermore, given that it is a quality shared with the entirety of the rest of the British population, it would, in terms of uniqueness, appear to be somewhat toward the lower end of the scale.

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Ainsworth should throw in the towel

Posted on July 30, 2009 | 1 Comment

Bob AinsworthBob Ainsworth, who is presently the Defence Secretary, has cut short his annual holiday to announce that he is bringing forward a review of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme – a development, I’m sure, wholly unconnected with yesterday’s Sun front page, highlighted  by Tim Montgomerie.

After attempting, remarkably squalidly, to salvage a scrap of political advantage from the débâcle by making the astonishingly tasteless observation that “the world-class medical care that we provide on operations means that more people are surviving very serious injuries than before” (somebody please sack that press officer), Mr Ainsworth promises that the new arrangements will benefit troops with claims under the existing scheme:

“The underlining principle of the scheme, that those most seriously injured should receive the most compensation, is an important one that we will maintain.

“I can offer an assurance, however, that new arrangements will benefit those with claims under the existing scheme, including those mentioned in the current court case.”

If that is indeed the case, perhaps he could instruct counsel to inform the Court that he is abandoning his appeals against the tribunal awards in favour of Corporal Anthony Duncan and Royal Marine Matthew McWilliams, so that those two brave men may be spared further, unnecessary distress.

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Posted in Bob Ainsworth

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