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The Tories And Security
A couple of security policies
Following the RUSI bombshell on the strategic challenges facing Britain in the forthcoming decades, David Cameron's security spokeswoman Baroness Neville-Jones told press that the Conservative leader was due to make a speech calling for the creation of a US-style "National Security Council."
Lady Neville-Jones gave one of the most robust responses to the security report, which damned the ideological policies Britain had followed for more than a decade which had put the country under risk. While Labour MPs dismissed the authors' findings and their attack dogs in the press dismissed the compilers of the report as colonialists, she echoed the report's attack on multiculturalism and its calls for a unified response to threats from both within and without the UK.
A speech the following week (18-24 February) by her boss would crystallise these plans, she added.
We've been unable to find evidence of any such speech, however. Yes, Mr Cameron has been busy talking about the need for security. He gave a speech on his "new conservatism" in Bolton on Friday, which laid out his vision. He touched on economic security at one stage, and had EURSOC briefly excited when he said that along with opportunity and responsibility, "security" was the third item on the Conservative agenda.
What sort of security?
"Finally, our security agenda.
"In response to the new world of insecurity, Conservatives want to make Britain safer and greener.
"Reforming the police they spend more of their time on the beat than at the desks…a decentralised energy revolution so we have a securer and cleaner supply of energy… and as I have laid out, restoring our country's economic security so people don't have to worry about having a roof over their head and a job to go to."
More eco-buggery and more cops on the beat. Doesn't exactly point to a National Security agenda, does it?
But but but! A few days earlier he had dwelled on security in another important speech. Food security. Speaking to Britain's National Farmers Union, Cameron said that the production of food was the most vital industry and seemed to suggest that Britain's security was at threat because too much food was imported from overseas (an argument that will be welcomed warmly by some French politicians).
There's much good sense in Cameron's speech to the farmers, and we're not knocking him for that. However, he addressed his party's three elements again - responsibility, opportunity, security - and showed how food production in a freer market in response to changing demands from the likes of "Yummy Mummies" fitted with this vision. Food security, he says, is crucial.
Still no word on a broader strategic response to security of the kind demanded by the RUSI report.
Did we miss something? Has Cameron returned to the drawing board with his security speech, or is he, like the BBC he is so often desperate to please sweeping wider security issues under the carpet?
