I’ve had an enormous amount of feedback from my piece in the Yorkshire Post arguing for maintaining Trident and building the Aircraft Carriers. Not all of it positive of course, but it was very nice to receive a few very appreciative notes from very senior military types. So as an area I like to pay close attention to, I savoured this piece in this week’s Economist.
I think this chart of theirs sums up the problem very clearly.
The Defence budget is not really constrained because of Eurofighter, Trident, Aircraft Carriers or even Iraq or Afghanistan. It has been held back to pay for Health, Education and Welfare (the last not shown) all spending on which have all increased massively since the late 80s and particularly since 2000.