David Blackburn

Liam Fox is anticipating the Strategic Defence Review, preparing the services for what will be extremely bad news. Britain will not engage in large scale operations in the immediate future. The Telegraph reports that officials intend to reduce the number of strike aircraft, warships and tanks. Future strategic emphasis will be on maximising firepower and range and minimising direct and associated costs. The service arms have mobilised their writers to prepare a defence. The Times have hosted a set-to between Air-Vice Marshall Tony Mason and Major General Julian Thompson. Mason’s argument is simple: warfare is determined by air superiority. He writes: ‘Since Dunkirk, British Armed Forces have usually fought beneath skies controlled by friendly aircraft.

Michael Gove may be a pip-squeak but he has an imperious voice and that formidable quality of both sounding and being enormously clever. With a faint note of arrogance, he bossed a potentially difficult interview on the Today programme this morning. Tired of defending himself against Ed Balls’ dishonest maxim that what’s good for bureaucratic process is good for children, Gove changed tactics. He described his bill as a ‘permissive piece of legislation’ and linked it directly to the Blair-Adonis Academy reforms, which were frustrated by a regressive coalition wedded to the educational status quo.

Cameron’s Big Society Blitzkreig is underway, and he says that he hopes to ‘foster a new culture of voluntarism, of philanthropy and social action’. So far so good. As Fraser noted yesterday, there is a long and generous history of philanthropy in Britain; success will depend on the government transforming a culture of private charity into one of community charity. Collective action is hard to instil, not least when money is tight. Some projects and schemes will be favoured over others and many people will be disappointed. Cameron hoped to lessen financial shortfalls by raiding dormant bank accounts. It’s a brilliant idea in theory, but the FT sounds a note of caution.

It’s back. David Cameron is re-launching the Big Society, the least captivating idea in British politics. There is nothing wrong with the central idea: the grand plan to decentralise power to local communities. Terminology was a problem. The Big Society sounded infantile and patronising. The detail was lost in a morass of wonkery. The overall vision was contradictory: ‘people power’ was the end, community organisers were the means. The authors of the Big Society erroneously assumed that people care about community. But community is a turn-off for many, and the Big Society sounded like one enormous management meeting from which there is no escape. From Westmoreland to Richmond-upon-Thames, voters hated it.

Guess who has popped-up as David Cameron departs for Washington? The Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is defying the gravest of medical prognoses. It’s all suspiciously convenient, given Britain and America’s recent terse relations. What’s more BP, the international bogeyman, is in the firing line – Hillary Clinton will investigate rumours that the company conspired with the British government to include al-Megrahi in a Prisoner Transfer Agreement, and that BP pressured the Scottish executive to release al-Megrahi last summer. She’s wasting her time: this well of fetid intrigue was capped last summer.