General Sir Richard Dannatt is living up to his reputation for less than tactful comments.
Talking about his appointment as a ‘goat’ to be, Dannatt says Cameron phoned him a few weeks ago:
It was put to me that the defence team lacked expert understanding.
Dannatt then added for completeness that he and Cameron “had had a couple of substantive discussions over the past 12 to 18 months”.
Then we get to Trident, which was enthusiastically backed at the Tory conference:
The thing that does need to be reviewed is the deterrence. It cost a lot of money…people had to be quite clear as to its utility.
Cameron's first post conference headache has arrived. We should expect a swift clarifying statement to be issued very soon.
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I suspect that Cameron will find, like Brown did, that a GOAT person is all very well, and can be a coup when they join up with you. But the downside is that they are not politicians; they have principles. They are there for their expertise and that expertise doesn't always sit well with the politics.
ReplyDeleteFor example: the deterrence is not there to deter. It is there to allow the British Prime Minister access to a permanent seat on the Security Council. This is important to a politician fond of dinners at the White House, less so to a soldier with battles to fight and men to protect.