Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Professor Michael Clarke states that defence matters are deemed ‘less...
As the election campaigns are well underway, questions have risen with regards to how much time is being allocated to defence matters.
“It won’t get a lot of time,” Professor Clarke expressed, “because it never does. The issue for defence is that you can lose an election on a defence issue. But you can’t win it.
“Defence is one of these things you can slip up on, but usually the parties want to get through it within a day.”
Decisions and contracts have been ‘put on hold’ in Parliament due to the upcoming elections.
“Like the rest of Whitehall, the Ministry of Defence can’t do anything because they’re busy with other things,” Mr Clarke said, “they’re busy thinking about an incoming government – whatever party it is, if it’s got a different makeup to this government.”
It was announced in March 2019, Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth - home to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines and 30 Commando Information Exploitation Group - was set to close.
Yet decisions as to where the Marines will be based is still under discussion.
Three Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) ships necessary for the protection of the new Carrier Battle Groups, has also been put on hold due to the elections.
Amongst the list of setbacks is the five new Type-31 combat ships which has been said to be put on hold.
“Thankfully 500 of the medium weight vehicles, ‘The Boxer’ have been ordered.” Mr Clarke added.
When asked whether bringing contracts back into Britain could help influence votes if the parties was to push for that in their campaigns, Mr Clarke said: “All parties say they have a really strong defence industrial strategy, none of that’s true.
“We have documents about it, but if you look at the documents over the last 20 years, they just go around in circles.
“In reality, the government is very reluctant to have a definite defence industrial strategy, which places work with British ship yards and manufacturers, because sometimes it may not be the best deal.”
Touching on whether or not Professor Clarke believes the parties have got it right in almost ignoring defence campaigns, he said: “I wish defence was more important, because it’s not just the matter of ‘are we spending the money right’, or ‘it’s really a matter of strategic orientation. We should put to the people of the country ‘how much are we prepared to spend on our defence.’
“Because the world out there is getting a lot loess safe. We live in an ‘increasingly unstable’ neighbourhood in Europe.
“Politicians always assume the people don’t want to pay more for defence, but the truth is, they never asked them.
“I’d love there to be an election issue which says, ‘we support spending half as much again on defence’ and changing the nature of what we do, and really concentrating on where we’ll be between 2030 and 2040.
“I bet the public would get interested in that because it’s their children’s safety.”
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