UNDERSTANDABLY, given the breadth and depth of the issues on which he spoke, the Prime Minister's report to the House of Commons on defence economies yesterday lasted for ninety minutes. Comment can therefore only be partial and instinctive rather than fully considered. Almost the only positive item in a long agenda of reductions and savings was the decision to defer the nuclear Trident issue until around 2006 -- in other words until after the next election. This will be a relief to the Liberal Democrats in the coalition who do not want a renewal of Trident and it will also give more time -- a commodity in short supply since the present government took office -- to review most carefully the pros and cons of the independent nuclear deterrent.
As seems inevitable the issue of aircraft carriers remains toxic. Labour is being blamed for a contractual two for one deal which cannot be unpicked but that decision was in part to save money on a provision that the Royal Navy and many, but not all, independent strategists think important. The prospect of two carriers without planes for a decade and one of them held in extended readiness, ie mothballed, is bizarre.
Mr Cameron is said to have spoken with President Obama and assured him that Britain will remain a first rate power and a robust ally of the United States and will keep to the NATO spending commitment. We shall see.
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