Our hapless Government
7 March 2011
The Tory government’s shambles over Libya continues apace.
The latest blunder in government policy is the botched mission to make contact with the Libyan opposition movement. A diplomatic team under the protection of Special Forces was arrested and hand-cuffed by the rebels whom they sought to help. This joins a list of incompetency since the uprising began in Libya.
First, assuming that Libya would follow the successful pattern in Tunisia and Egypt, the Government claimed Gaddafi had fled the country to Venezuela. This manifested the wishful thinking in this government – possibly the same wishful thinking that hopes that the economy will turn out right. We expect more than wishful thinking from our leaders.
Then David Cameron tried to redress his slow response to evacuate British oil workers by his gung-ho attitude to creating a no fly zone over Libya. Then he was embarrassed by a slap down from the Americans. His rhetoric annoyed the US Defence Secretary Robert Gates who commented: “There is a lot of, frankly, loose talk about some of these military options. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. It also requires more aeroplanes than you would find on a single aircraft carrier. It is a big operation by a big country.” This is possibly a jibe at the Tory Government’s recent offer for sale of the decommissioned aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, for which the Ministry of Defence hopes to raise £2 million. The Scottish Christian Party thinks it would be better used as a ready-made off-shore prison ship to ease the pressure on our prison population.
This shows the inability of our Prime Minister to response adequately to crises. He is far from being “a safe pair of hands”. Besides, the Tory Government has just cut back on our air force and our aircraft carrier capacity.
