Staff Sergeant, pointing his
pace-stick hard into the stomach of an officer cadet: “Sir, there is a shit at
the end of this stick”. Officer Cadet: “Not at this end, Staff”
Anecdote from the late, great TV
chef Keith Floyd.
Huawei this?
Alphen,
Netherlands, 2 May. How has Britain been reduced to this? Keith Floyd’s aphorism
just about sum up relations within what is left of Prime Minister Theresa May’s
Cabinet. Yesterday, Defence Secretary
Gavin Williamson was sacked for allegedly leaking details of a National
Security Council meeting to a Daily
Telegraph journalist. At the meeting Theresa May over-rode concerns from
the security services to allow China’s Huawei
to take part in the construction of Britain’s 5G critical infrastructure. Someone
leaked her decision. Williamson categorically denies any wrongdoing and says he
is the victim of a witch-hunt. If so, by whom and for what reason?
Let me state
for the record that if Williamson is responsible for the leak then May had no
choice but to sack him. Given the nature of national security and the risks
unnamed people take daily to keep millions safe it is vital that secrecy is
maintained at the highest levels of government. For too long now May’s
Brexit-battered Administration has given the impression of an Administration in
which discipline has broken down at the high levels of responsibility. And yet, and from a distance, I rather
respected Williamson. Unlike many of his predecessors, who were simply sent to
the Ministry of Defence to either keep defence cuts out of the headlines, or
raid the defence budget, or both, Williamson fought hard for his department in
the face of the strategic illiteracy of May and the Treasury (Finance Ministry)
which seem to think that Britain exists in a benign world.
Williamson’s ‘mistakes’
The ‘mistakes’
Williamson seems to have made are fourfold. First, Williamson was Chief Whip
(prime ministerial enforcer in the House of Commons) prior to his appointment
as Secretary of State for Defence. In that role he made few attempts to make
friends in the Parliamentary Conservative Party. Second, he crossed the
almighty Treasury and May’s living, breathing Cardinal Richelieu, Chancellor
Philip Hammond. Third, he also crossed the mighty (over-mighty?) civil servant Sir
Mark Sedwill who combines the posts of Cabinet Secretary AND National Security
Adviser. Sedwill had last year conducted the National Security Capabilities
Review and rightly, to my mind, had sought to boost Britain’s intelligence and
cyber defences. However, the Treasury, and its ‘we only recognise as much
threat as we say you can afford’ approach to Britain’s security and defences,
meant any such investment would have to come from within an already
hard-pressed defence budget. Williamson successfully resisted the Sedwill Plan
and also secured a modest increase in Britain’s beleaguered defence budget.
Fourth, Williamson was not of the Establishment and thus not one of ‘Us’.
This morning
Sedwill is getting much of the blame as the ‘architect’ of Williamson’s demise.
In fact, what really led to Williamson’s downfall are the deep tensions within
the Cabinet and the egregious lack of leadership from Prime Minister May. These
tensions actually go deeper than Brexit, even if May’s disastrous ‘stewardship’
of the Britain’s not-leaving the EU has destroyed her authority and her
Administration.
Britain’s
China syndrome
There are two
structural factors at work in Williamson’s dismissal that reveal the extent to
which the current Administration has broken down. First, Britain cannot or will
not afford the ways and means to achieve its declared stated security and
defence ends. This is in spite the fast-changing nature of the mounting threats
Britain faces. Rather, London fixates on maintaining the fantasy of Britain
spending 2% GDP on defence but getting nothing like the defence outcomes 2%
properly spent on defence would generate.
Second, there is a profound split within the Cabinet, and across
government, as to whether China is an opportunity for Britain or a threat to it.
The ends,
ways and means of Britain’s security and defence policy is at crisis point. To
fund Britain’s existing defence equipment procurement plans alone would require
an additional £21bn over public investment. However, the ‘fiscal discipline’
imposed by the Treasury since the 2010 and 2015 Strategic Defence and Security
Reviews mean there is little chance of such money being made available to
defence. The result has been the progressive cutting back of the front-line
force and the hollowing out of logistics and all the vital forces and resources
that are needed to maintain and sustain high-end operations during a major
crisis which is seen as ever more plausible.
The Treasury’s
China syndrome is equally telling. Phillip Hammond and his team see opportunity
in China’s rise. Hammond is at the forefront of a business lobby in government
that has also dominated May’s Brexit policy, such as it is. The Ministry of Defence
and its partners in the Secret Intelligence Service, know only too well that
China is a strategic competitor and that Huawei
is ultimately an agent of the Chinese state. To Phillip Hammond and the Treasury the focus
is determinedly on the budget deficit and the national debt and how to reduce
them. Good relations with China are key to that. Whilst to Williamson and his
colleagues Britain’s future security and defence means keeping close to the Americans,
especially intelligence-sharing through such groupings as Five Eyes, and China
is a threat to that.
One state,
two world-views
Both the Treasury
and the Ministry of Defence are committed to Britain’s future security but they
define ‘security’ completely differently. The result is that Britain is trying
to ride two horses trying to eat each other at the same time – America and China.
At the same time, Britain is seeking to feed a third horse, the European Union,
even as it endeavours to dismount it. The
result is the chaos implicit in Williamson’s demise. Who is to blame?
Ultimately, it is the appalling absence of leadership from Primus inter-Pares
May that has created this breakdown in coherent national strategy and policy.
Consequently, different departments of state have developed different world
views. It is these contending world
views that ultimately did for Gavin Williamson. Good luck with that, Penny Mordaunt.
Julian
Lindley-French
