Britain must step up defence spending to meet its foreign policy commitments or risk becoming a nonentity on the world stage, industry bosses warned.
"Our decline as a nation will become irreversible and we'll find ourselves with no real influence in the world," said Mike Turner, chairman of the Defence Industries Council (DIC) and former chief executive of BAE Systems. "We believe urgent action is needed."
Accompanied by the current chief executive of BAE Systems, Ian King, the boss of Rolls Royce's defence business, Martin Fausset, and the UK heads of other large defence companies Thales and Finmeccanica, Mr Turner said the Government's policy of prosecuting foreign wars while reducing the proportion of gross domestic product spent on defence was becoming unsustainable.
Now, funnily enough I happen to agree with that last point. Our current foreign military operations are unsustainable.
However I'm not sure we should be giving £2bn of our money to a bunch of warmongers -- as DIC Chairman Mike Turner suggests we should. A more sensible policy might be to admit that we can't remake the world in the image of Tony Blair and pull out of Afghanistan. Thus reducing our need to spend more on the 'British Military Industrial Complex'.
But given Nu Labour's penchant for burning our money I'm pretty sure they'll go with this DIC idea. Because in a literal sense it's as close as they'll ever come to doing the aforementioned with our money without breaching health and safety.
4 comments:
I'm wondering just why these hardcore industrialists feel that we ought to have influence in the world?
They seem to be clinging on to the idea that the British Empire exists. Our influence in the world should not be determined by the capabilities of our military.
At least they are stepping forward under a clear banner of an industry lobby group.
Of course they want more spending. Are they a Fake Charity or pretending to be independent? Doubt it.
These people are not our main threat, but those who lobby "in plain sight" but under a veil of fake respectability and neutrality.
Why would we need influence over the world? If we kept our nose out of other people's business, we might be able to concentrate on fixing problems at home!
Post a Comment