TW
0

By Jason Moore

IT is amazing how one sentence can change a debate. Danny Alexander, the first Secretary at the Treasury, and one of the few Liberal Democrats I actually admire, destroyed the debate over defence cuts when he said that the British army had more horses than tanks. Sadly, it is true and the Army has about 500 horses and 250 Challenger tanks. Before this statement the army appeared to be winning the debate and there was a public outcry at the volume of the cuts. But enter the Liberal Democrat and he effectively torpedoed the whole debate. It is clear that the army does have some room to make cuts especially, as now thousands of soldiers are being withdrawn from Afghanistan. The army is also pulling out of its bases in Germany, which will also save enormous sums of money. But I do agree that a smaller army will mean that the British government, can forget foreign conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. It just wouldn´t have the necessary manpower or equipment. Basically the 80'000 strong army will be just a home guard and any overseas deployment will be small, to say the least. But the army shouldn´t complain too much. They have escaped the enormous cuts which were made to the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force because they were on active operations in Afghanistan. In the end a single politician appears to have tamed the might, of the British army, sometimes it is a question of ‘horses for courses' and nothing more.