A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Des Browne

The calls by David Cameron for Des Browne to resign as Defence Secretary are just silly.

I didn't think that the released sailors and marines should have been authorised to sell their stories, but either way it is not a momentous decision that should make or break a minister's career.

Defence Secretaries should resign if they take bad decisions that unnecessarily endanger the lives of service personnel, not because of a decision about the MoD rules on PR.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A contrary view would be that the decisions over PR (note plural decisions)were serious and significant, not silly. We are talking here about the credibility of the UK Armed Services and the diplomatic reverberations in the aftermath of a major international incident.

For me, a new low in our national self-esteeem was reached when the female ex-hostage speaking on one of her TV interviews about the money she was paid, sought to assure everybody that it was OK because "the ship, the Cornwall, will get a precentage".

I suppose that kind of level of debate over an international incident is in line with the UK domestic policy of promoting giant casinos and opening the floodgates of gambling promotions on TV... it's all about the percentages eh?

1:35 pm, April 16, 2007

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, the most offensive thing about this has been the idea, promoted by Cameron and repeated by Norman 'idiot' Smith on the Today programme, that the people who should decide whether or not a defence minister stays are the armed forces.

That's maybe what happens in military dictatorships, but it is not what should happen in britain. And instead of the BBC actually asking Mr cameron whether he really means it when he makes this ludicrous statement, they back it up and report it as 'truth'.

2:09 pm, April 16, 2007

 

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