Troop Reserves Drained

General Sir Richard Dannatt, in a memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph, has said that the United Kingdom's troop reserves are virtually "non-existent". He says the current troop deployments are "manageable", but only just, and that the Army has "almost no capacity to react to the unexpected", suffering severe manpower and equipment shortages. Britain has just one battalion, made up of 500 troops, the Spearhead Lead Element, to react to a sudden emergency at home or abroad. Should the latter occur, Britain would be left defenceless.

BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood said ... the internal memo was leaked to put political pressure on the government ahead of a spending review.

Whether Mr Wood is right or wrong doesn't matter, because this leaked memo or any other will never have any effect on the defence policy of this Government. Dannatt has failed to recognise that the only reason the Armed Forces remain "manageable" in their current state is because of the now ex-prime minister. He hasn't noticed that the man who for ten years has starved the Army, Navy and Air Force of funds is now the head of the Government, and his empty words about "increased investment" in last Wednesday's Prime Minister's Question Time will redeem him.

What Gordon Brown did point out, though, was that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has declared that the test of a future Cameronite government would be its ability to resist calls for further public expenditure. Though this is a just stance when it comes to the bureaucrat-infested public services, it is idiocy when it comes to the Armed Forces.

So no matter how much Liam Fox says there's an "urgent need to review our strategic approach", his 'superiors' in the Shadow Cabinet will never give him the financial means to act on it should he ever get the opportunity.