If You Risk Your Life to Fight for Your Country, We Will Honour You

The vole-brained Secretary for War and the Colonies, Liam Fox, has been lecturing the armed forces about taking their medicine like men. Now that Iraq has been won, Afghanistan cleansed and Libya liberated, Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition has decided it's about time our brave boys got what is coming to them; which, in the judgement of Fox and his colleagues, amounts to a few thousand compulsory redundancies and the decommissioning of various warships and aircraft. The navy will get some new aircraft carriers one day, but will have to wait for three years before they can carry any aircraft. The alternative, said Fox, is the same as the alternative to trampling the public sector: "more borrowing, more tax rises or more cuts elsewhere"; and, since it would be un-British to save a few billions by foregoing whatever shiny new blanched pachyderm is to replace Trident, this is clearly no alternative at all.

Fox then went into his favourite Muscular Christian mode: "There are no easy answers, there are no silver bullets. Only tough decisions, hard work and perseverance." Doubtless those who are made redundant will be invited to re-join the armed forces as volunteers and graciously permitted to persevere in making the best of things, while Fox chumps his way to joining his predecessor and party colleague, Malcolm Rifkind, in the mercenary business. Fox also blamed the Europeans for not jumping up to the mark whenever Britain and its master feel like bombing a few fuzzy-wuzzies, and blathered a bit about learning the lessons of history. Like Theresa May, Fox might profit from a study of how many of history's petty despots, imperial cranks and purple-faced twits have suffered deselection and occasional perforation through failing to keep their own hired thugs on side.