23 Nov 2015

Defence review, Corbyn and talk of a coup

The 2010 Defence Review was brutal for the armed forces. Announcing the 2015 successor review David Cameron confessed to the Commons that slashing the size of the army back then was one of his most painful moments in the 2010-15 government. Today’s review doesn’t utterly alter the landscape.

Britain still isn’t really in a position to conduct longer large-scale deployments overseas. There’s a boost to the rapid reaction forces, now raised to 50,000 personnel, but this review largely stabilises things when some in the defence community might have worried about even deeper cuts.

The new procurement projects seem to hinge on the MoD finding £11bn in efficiency savings, a pretty tall order. There’s quite a lot of land going for sale and thousands of civilian MoD workers losing their jobs but there’s also what looks like some “give” in the schedule as the MoD seems reluctant to give exact dates for when the new equipment is acquired.

After the Commons statement, Jeremy Corbyn’s critics in his own party lined up to say how badly he’d performed. In the chamber his own MPs sat in silence. His deputy, Tom Watson, sat beside him twisting his thumbs and staring forward with a stony expression. Maria Eagle, the shadow defence spokeswoman, sat on his other side, her features fixed and inscrutable.

Jeremy Corbyn focused on police numbers in his response to David Cameron and on what he sees as the under-pinning threats to national security that he said the Defence Review failed to study. Tories mocked him as he talked about climate change and water shortages as the generators of future conflict (even though they’re actually mentioned briefly in the government’s own document). I watched one  Labour MP get up as Jeremy Corbyn spoke, shake his head and leave the chamber.

Other Labour MPs started what looked like a political dance with David Cameron, asking for reassurances over the government’s plans to attack ISIL in Syria in what you might be forgiven thinking was the keen hope and confident expectation that they’ll get every one of them.

How does Labour approach the Syria vote?

Some frontbenchers say the shadow cabinet may try to force a three line whip backing Syrian bombing on Jeremy Corbyn. That could be a tall order and would definitely be taken as an act of warfare itself.

But things are pretty sulphurous on the Labour benches right now. Last week’s NEC meeting was seen by some influential figures as a sign that anti-Corbyn critics can’t afford to wait around. The NEC was shown plans to bring in membership plebiscites which Corbyn critics see as a means to pressurise them and change party policy by a back route. “Plebiscites,” one Shadow Cabinet member spat out, “are a right wing beast.”  An attempt to lift the suspension of Jeremy Corybn’s political adviser Andrew Fisher was linked to a call to suspend two Labour MP critics of Corbyn from the party.

The centre right is not agreed on how a change of leader comes about but you get a feeling that it won’t be bound by the rules. The word “coup” gets talked about. You wonder, speaking to some prominent Labour MPs, if mass resignations might come the other side of the May elections.

But nothing is set in stone just yet. Nothing except Tom Watson’s face that is.

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