Defence

Emily Thornberry might not know why Jeremy Corbyn made her Shadow Defence Secretary, but she will have known that this afternoon’s departmental questions for the Ministry of Defence was going to be a difficult session. She came armed with two questions that she knew few would listen to, and delivered them well. But for the rest of the session, she had to listen to MPs on all sides of the Commons attacking not the government of the day, but the policy of the Opposition party. In fact, the government was barely scrutinised at all today, so intense was the focus on Labour and its potential U-turn on Trident. Michael Fallon

Funnily enough, after Ken Livingstone told the Daily Politics that the defence review that he is co-chairing with the new Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry would consider whether Britain will leave Nato, the party has issued a statement shooting down the former Mayor’s suggestion: ‘The terms of the defence review are still to be agreed but will not look at our membership of Nato.’ Livingstone said the following to the BBC: ‘That’s one of the things we will look at. There will be many people wanting to do that. I don’t think it’s a particularly big issue because in the Cold War it was; it isn’t now. Russia is

Labour MPs have had plenty of opportunities over the past few weeks to look miserable. But today the party looked its most miserable ever as Jeremy Corbyn responded to David Cameron’s statement on the Strategic Defence and Security Review. Even the frontbenchers, particularly Tom Watson, looked unhappy. Andy Burnham looked even more doleful than usual. On the backbenches, MPs such as Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint wore masks of agony. Chris Leslie had his arms crossed defensively, looking miserable. Diane Abbott appeared to be a little snoozy. Helen Goodman was slumped in her seat in what appeared to be despair. Labourites afterwards described the response as ‘poor’. It was poor: Corbyn

David Cameron will set out his case for air strikes against IS in Syria to the Commons late next week. Cameron is, as I say in my Sun column today, immensely frustrated by the current British position of only bombing Islamic State in Iraq and not Syria. But he knows that it would be politically back breaking for him to lose another Commons vote on a matter of war and peace, so is proceeding cautiously.   But last night’s UN resolution has strengthened Cameron’s hand. Even before that, 30 Labour MPs were certain to back Cameron on this issue and another 30 were highly likely to. With a UN resolution

Is the government set to bring bombing Islamic State terrorists in Syria before the Commons soon? The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has announced that the RAF’s Tornado aircraft will be kept in service until 2017 for air strikes against the Islamic State, to ‘ensure we maintain this crucial operational tempo’. On the Today programme, Fallon explained that the aircraft have ‘proven their worth’ and have helped Iraqi forces in the fight against ISIL: ‘The Iraqi forces are slowly but surely beginning to push ISIL back. They have recaptured Tikrit, there is a campaign going on at the moment to liberate Ramadi. They are recruiting to both the army and to the

Michael Fallon is making the case to MPs today for British airstrikes against Isis in Syria. The Defence Secretary yesterday told the World at One that ‘It is a new parliament and I think Members of Parliament will want to think very carefully about how we best deal with Isil and illogicality of Isil not respecting the borderlines’. He is expected to make a statement at some point today urging MPs to do this thinking, either in the scheduled Commons debate on Britain and International Security, or separately. Given there is no permanent Labour leader in place yet, it is unlikely that a vote on action in Syria – if

It’s been obvious for a while that the Prime Minister is exasperated by the way American and other allied officials – including President Obama himself – keep expressing concern about Britain’s rapidly shrinking defence capabilities and the prospect of yet more defence cuts. David Cameron also dislikes being reminded that he lectured other Nato leaders about meeting the alliance’s minimum of spending 2 per cent GDP on defence, when by any honest calculation the UK is not going to meet that target. He hasn’t responded directly to the multiple warnings from Washington. This is presumably because overtly contradicting the President, the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence of the United States could

Michael Fallon’s confirmation last week that a Strategic Defence and Security Review is underway adds another question to the Conservatives’ growing list of slim-majority headaches: what to do about defence policy. With George Osborne hitting the Ministry of Defence with the second-largest pre-Budget cuts of any government department earlier this month, and Number 10 reportedly looking for ‘creative’ accounting measures to cover the fact that Britain will no longer meet NATO’s defence spending target, hopes that defence might escape further cuts have quickly evaporated. So the fact that the coming Spending Review is unlikely to deliver a rosy outcome for the MOD is already well known. The additional complicating factor, however, is the presence of various pre-election

Things have come to a pretty pass when the two party spokespeople who experience the worst drubbing in a debate are the current Defence Secretary and the Green party representative. In today’s Daily Politics defence debate Rebecca Johnson ended up, after some considerable flapping and obfuscation, disowning a section of the Green party’s website which said membership of a jihadi organisation shouldn’t be illegal. And Michael Fallon repeatedly refused to say that the Tories would support Labour in a vote on Trident renewal, then struggled under tough questions about the Tory failure to commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence. Vernon Coaker also dodged questions on Labour’s

What do the next generation of MPs think with regards to public services, government spending and taxes? Coffee House has got its hands on new research by Ipsos MORI on the opinions of prospective parliamentary candidates from the main parties. The pollsters interviewed almost one hundred PPCs – 26 Conservative, 29 Labour, 20 Liberal Democrat and 11 SNP – who are all standing in marginal or safe seats, and therefore stand a good chance of making it to the green benches after the general election. Here are the points that stand out: 1: Defence cuts on the front line Defence cuts lead the way for both Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates who

You might be forgiven for expecting that a Defence Secretary giving a speech on defence during an election campaign would involve an announcement about his party’s defence policy. And Michael Fallon did ‘announce’ something today, which is that the Tories would commit to four nuclear submarines, updated missiles and warheads in a renewal of the Trident continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent. This was an announcement in the sense that the Defence Secretary said it in a speech with a party-branded board behind him, but it wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was that Fallon, usually one of the cannier political operators out there, managed to give a speech attacking another