Fox and His Friends

Our vole-brained Secretary for War and the Colonies, Liam Fox, is having a bit of bother with his fag. Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat doormat for the Ministry of Defence, is annoyed because no assessments have been drawn up about alternatives to the Trident nuclear weapons system which did such a wonderful job of deterring the American freedom fighter Mohammed Junaid Babar and his merry men in July 2005. The debate has been framed, according to Harvey, as a yes-or-no choice about whether Britain should maintain a single nuclear-armed U-boat patrol every day of the year. According to Fox, it is necessary to maintain such patrols in order to protect Britain from the sort of nuclear blackmail which the US and its vassals have so kindly refrained from exerting upon Iran; and also to "ensure that we make our role apparent in reductions in total nuclear armaments". Unless we accumulate these weapons, we cannot have an apparent role in reducing them, which would apparently be too bad. In the light of such wisdom it is tempting to suggest that Liam Fox's preference for the harsh either-or is a consequence of Liam Fox's intellect being unable to encompass more than two choices; however, that would be uncharitable. Although studies devoted to the subject are nearly as sparse as alternatives to Trident, it is virtually certain that almost all members of the Not Awfully Brainy Party can count on almost all the fingers of at least one hand if granted enough time to cogitate.

Faced with another limited defensive choice, in this case between the Only Obeying Orders defence and the I Didn't Know What Was Happening defence, the retired Blair apparatchik who now calls himself Lord Browne of Ladyton has plumped enthusiastically for the latter. It appears that when the case for replacing Trident was made shortly before the Reverend Tony's ascension to the US lecture circuit, the facts and figures presented to Browne were insufficient. As a Blairite minister of defence, with all the intellectual independence and moral force implied by such a position, Browne's own efforts to repair the shortcomings of his researchers were no doubt Herculean; we can only hope that, as Lord Browne of Ladyton, his exertions have been rewarded with a home fit for a hero.