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Over the past few days there has been an independent report released by UKNDA (http://www.uknda.org/) concerning the need for a substantial increase in defence spending to £15 billion extra per year.

In addition to this has been Gordon Brown’s visit to Washington and many British journalists writing about the ‘Special Relationship’ and how the British PM was ‘side lined’ to a great degree. The truth or otherwise is frankly of little interest, that there is a direct connection between military capability and ‘influence’ in most situations, should be understood clearly, it is hardly a new concept.

Plus, a British Prime Minister clearly ‘on the ropes’ politically at home and barely likely to last another 12 months – What Do You Expect the Americans to do, invest any political capital in him when the electorate back in the UK won’t ?

New Labour was The Problem

It is said that within the seeds of our success we also carry the seeds of our own destruction and never was this more true than in the story of New Labour. The rot started before they even came to power with Blair and Brown not fighting an electoral battle for the Leadership of the Labour Party in the mid 90s. This in turn was to lead to Brown’s “Unopposed Coronation” in 1997 which will go down in the history of the Labour Party as “their biggest mistake ever”.

It is the weirdest thing ever to contemplate that since 1997 the United Kingdom has been run by two people who seem to ‘major’ on ego but lacking much in the way of backbone, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Tony Blair

In Tony Blair, never has a Prime Minister been so free with deploying British Forces in action, promising them to numerous ‘EU/European’ under funded initiatives and, selling the British Defence Industry short to ‘appease’ his EU friends and ‘familiars’ why ? Where these decisions based upon who would give him and his family, ‘freebie holidays’ rather than what was good for the UK ?

But at no moment in time did Tony Blair have the courage or the balls to deal with his protagonist Brown and sack him, cowardice consumed Blair totally. Better to ‘pose’ over foreign adventures than deal with real domestic issues from which Brown had already excluded him anyway. Better to promise British troops even if they are badly equipped for the task and Blair had no authority to put that right.

Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown who felt that he was ‘cheated’ out of being Labour Leader and following the second election, appears to have started a virulent campaign to get the top job for himself by forcing Blair to step down. Every decision, right or wrong taken by Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer was designed to deliver just one outcome, “Gordon at No.10”.

Into the Euro or not, Defence Spending or not; all decisions made by Gordon Brown seem designed purely to undermine Blair and deliver the PM’s job to Gordon Brown. In a mirror image of Blair he seems to have been totally oblivious to the UK’s best interests and focused wholly on his own short term objective which in the end, he was entirely unsuited for, very much a case of the cream rising until it soured.

And So To the Future…

But there is also something good to be had from all of this because it all having been so amazingly ‘Bad’ , Labour must get swept away at the next election leaving an incoming Tory Government with the opportunity for a fresh start and a new beginning.

Whilst it is difficult given the global financial crisis and our current military commitments in Iraq, coming to an end soon but an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan, we need to clear the decks with regard to Foreign Policy and Defence so that whilst the next Government won’t have a free hand, it will have the opportunity to radically alter many things to our specific National interests.