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FUTURE DEFENCE REVIEW

Options for Britain's Defence and Security

The Battle to Reform
UK Defence
Acquisition
Changing the Dinosaurs Spots

By Bill Kincaid
Foreword by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
Cartoons by Jim Potts
£20.00 (plus £5.00 P&P), 404 pages
ISBN: 0855161388
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Defence and the General Election: Labour's Defence Quagmire

By Clark Vasey
4 Jan 2010

For more than a decade, defence has been a low political priority with seemingly few votes in it. Over the last few months this has begun to change with increasing casualties in Afghanistan, some specifically linked to inadequate defence funding, allegations of huge waste and incompetence in defence equipment acquisition, and the delay to a report commissioned by the previous Secretary of
State for Defence.

The media now seize on defence stories. Whether defence will now make a clear
impact on the electorate in the run-up to the General Election is not clear, but major political parties will not want to ignore it.

In this section, we look at the major issues facing the Party leaders in defence acquisition with articles by the RUSI Acquisition Focus on acquisition issues, by the Defence Industries Council on the economic role played by the British defence industry, by Clark Vasey at Bell Pottinger on Labour’s defence quagmire, and by John Dowdy of McKinsey’s on the cyclic downturn in defence expenditure in UK and US.

In our next issue, we shall look at the Conservative position and at specific issues that will dominate the defence debate during the final run-in.

Here, Clark Vasey analyses the current defence issues for the Government and how these will be handled between now and the defence review that is widely expected to be held after the next General Election. 



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