Liam Fox - complete and utter shit

More Indian Bicycle Marketing, this time from The Scots Git in today's FT:

The likelihood of inheriting “unpleasant, unpaid bills” at the Ministry of Defence means Conservatives must resist the temptation of promising tax cuts, said Liam Fox ... setting out plans to realign UK defence policy, shifting further away from Europe ... and opening the door to buying more “off-the-shelf” equipment from the US.

Rather than simply relying on “preferential treatment” to support a UK defence industrial base, a Conservative government would throw support behind selling UK arms to the world by reinstating the Defence Export Services Organisation, he said.

“That is why I take every opportunity, despite being an ardent tax cutter myself, to warn my colleagues that we may find a number of unpleasant unpaid bills left behind by Labour on taking office,” he said.

For some reason, the Tory Right love a) tax cuts, b) spending more on the military, and c) the USA. So he has to try and appeal to all these interests. But d'you see what he did there? He appears to have mastered Doublethink and to be able to espouse completely contradictory standpoints:

a) UK 'defence' [sic] spending is about 2.5% of GDP. The bulk of that is actually 'attack' spending, so you could easily double 'defence' spending if you simultaneously halved 'attack' spending.

b) He's trying to garner the votes of people who'd like to see tax cuts and in the next breath saying there won't be any! He cheerfully ignores the simple maths that the gummint wastes 10% of GDP on complete crap. Increasing 'defence' spending from 2.5% to 3.5% of GDP could easily go in tandem with overall tax cuts.

c) Bugger the USA. I am no more in favour of being the 51st state of the USA any more than I am of being the 27th state of the EU. Or, for that matter, the 4th state of the UK.

d) Altho' the Tories are supposed to be more free-market, The Scots Git is simultaneously calling for us to buy more weapons from the USA (yes, that would make them cheaper, but also make us pretty beholden to them for spare parts and software updates etc) and also calling for subsidies to UK weapons manufacturers, which would make them more expensive. It's either one or t'other, AFAICS, or preferably neither.

Summary: he is a complete and utter shit and should f*** off back whence he came.