Post by Focus on Mar 2, 2013 17:13:28 GMT
First, you befriend your chicken, says a Royal Marine, before explaining exactly how you then break its neck. As the marine talks, he begins to gut a bird he killed earlier. Suddenly, the Eastleigh by-election doesn’t seem quite so brutal.
A nervous looking Defence Secretary — here to survey the Armed Forces’ role in protecting key energy supply routes across the Arctic — looks on. But Philip Hammond, originally a small businessman from Essex, is not keen to copy Vladimir Putin by stripping off and heading into the frozen Norwegian wilderness for the cameras.
In Mr Hammond’s opinion rising employment should be countered by a falling welfare budget
Instead there is a joke at the expense of the horse meat scandal as the marine rips apart another lifeless chicken: “At least it didn’t come from a complicated supply chain in Romania.”
With the Arctic’s huge natural resources increasingly crucial to Britain’s energy supply, Mr Hammond travelled to the High North to scrutinise a new front line for the Armed Forces after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. As he did so, President Putin made an aggressive speech about the dangers of the “militarisation of the Arctic”.
Philip Hammond joins the Royal Marines on Arctic Training near the Asegarden Camp in Harstad, Norway
Mr Hammond watched an elite unit diving into frozen lakes and downing shots of rum to kick start their circulation — training for a new “era of contingency”, where the Armed Forces are ready to respond to crises.
“By the end of next year, we will have finished our combat role,” he says. “It is refocusing people’s minds on what we do next, how we organise our Armed Forces for the post-Afghanistan era.
“Many people in Britain will regard the end of combat in Afghanistan as a very good news story, but for many young men and women joining the Armed Forces, the lure of operations is a big recruiting sergeant and we have to think how we are going to replace the excitement of operations for them with equally stimulating training and exercising.”
Such training regimes are expensive, however, and George Osborne and David Cameron have so far refused to ring-fence defence spending.
When Mr Hammond took over as Defence Secretary in 2011, following the resignation of Dr Liam Fox, service chiefs were concerned that they would be overseen by a bean counter.
Mr Hammond was Mr Osborne’s deputy in opposition, with a reputation for fiscal prudence, and was seen as an unlikely ally in the push for more defence funds.
However, in a dramatic public intervention as confidential talks are poised to begin on the next round of public spending after 2015, Mr Hammond says that he cannot tolerate further defence cuts and other departments must step up to the plate.
“I shall go into the spending review fighting the case for the defence budget on the basis that we have made very large cuts to defence,” he says firmly. “We’ve done that with the collaboration and cooperation of the military.”
The Royal Marines during Arctic training exercises near the Asegarden Camp in Harstad, Norway
In his opinion, further cuts would have a catastrophic effect on the Forces, without saving much money. Effectively, a billion-pound ship would be left tied up, for want of a few hundred thousand pounds worth of fuel. He believes he would not be able to meet stated security objectives if forced to make further cuts.
“We have produced a plan that is still very challenging and will not be fully implemented for another six years and requires us to make continuous efficiency savings over the next six years, and we have carried everybody with us and we have maintained … a remarkably high proportion of our military capability while taking out substantial amounts of cost. We can’t go on doing that, with further reductions, without having significant impact on military capability.”
The tanks off our lawn message could not be clearer, and the fact that Mr Hammond is prepared to speak out so publicly may add to a growing sense that the Prime Minister is losing his grip. There have been anonymous reports of Cabinet ministers including Mr Hammond and Theresa May, the Home Secretary, forming an unofficial alliance to fight the cuts. So, are you a member of the so-called national union of ministers, Mr Hammond? “I have never seen myself as a union man,” he grins, pointedly not denying the suggestion.
He insists his relationship with the Chancellor is unaffected, but then begins a broadside against other departments, confirming Cabinet antagonism towards the Government’s spending programme. “This is not a battle between me and the Chancellor, or indeed the Home Secretary and the Chancellor, it’s a discussion between people who share priorities,” he says.
It is the welfare budget, and other issues dear to Liberal Democrat hearts, that are in this Defence Secretary’s sights. “There is a body of opinion within Cabinet that we have to look at the welfare budget again. The welfare budget is the bit of public spending that has risen the furthest and the fastest and if we are going to get control of public spending on a sustainable basis, we are going to have to do more to tackle the growth in the welfare budget.”
In Mr Hammond’s opinion, rising employment should be countered by a falling welfare budget. He appreciates Iain Duncan-Smith’s plans for the long-term, “but in the short term, we have an immediate problem in 2015-16 and I believe that welfare will have to make a further contribution to that problem”.
In a sign of the behind-the-scenes talks, the Prime Minister floated the idea that the Department for International Development, with its ring-fenced funding, could pick up the tab for some of the Armed Forces’ humanitarian work.
The Defence Secretary wholeheartedly agrees and suggests that other departments could also contribute to the Armed Forces.
“We maintain a warship in the Caribbean during the hurricane season to be on hand to intervene if there is a humanitarian problem as a result of hurricanes,” he says. “In these kinds of areas, I think it does make sense to explore whether our colleagues at International Development could be more supportive.”
For Mr Hammond, spending priorities will define the very soul of the Tory party in the run-up to the next general election. “I am a Conservative. The kind of Conservatism I was brought up on says that the first priority of the government is defending the country and maintaining law and order. Those are the two top priorities for me,” he says.
Many of his colleagues are envious because he does not have any Liberal Democrats in his department.
“We’ve got no Lib Dems, because, apparently, Nick Clegg doesn’t regard defence as an important area,” he snaps.
With Mr Hammond’s stock rising in Tory circles, and today’s intervention likely to appeal to the grassroots, it may be a decision Mr Clegg comes to regret -- I'm sorry to say that I personally wouldn't believe a word this sanctimonious pr--k says ... our troops have treated abominably by him and his morons!! ...
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