While Hamas launches hundreds of missiles into Israel and Putin attempts to wipe Ukraine off the map, you’d think it would be all hands on deck for the Ministry of Defence Communications and Strategy team. Not quite…
The Director of Communications, Claire Pimm, whisked over a hundred of her staff across the river for a “Delivery and Strategy Away Day” at the plush four star Park Plaza Hotel today. Forced fun included scheduled “quizzes and games” and bingo, with a finger buffet to keep their strength up. This was following a speech about “how long the hours are” for the team…
The event included just 20 minutes of presentations. The rest of the day was filled with quizzes, games, and back-slapping. Quite the day to choose…
The temporary Director of Communications, Claire Pimm, recently enjoyed a taxpayer-funded, 5-day all-expenses paid trip to Miami involving a nicer hotel. Don’t count on becoming the permanent Director of Communications Claire…
Newly-appointed Defence Secretary and TikTok sensation Grant Shapps has removed the popular Chinese-owned social media app from his personal phone, and has surrendered control of his beloved account to his constituency staff. A source close to Shapps told the Express this afternoon:
“Grant knows that TikTok can be a valuable tool for communicating with his constituents… Aware of security concerns, he doesn’t have the app on his phone and the account is instead managed by his constituency staff.”
Earlier this year, Shapps’ team told Guido he would continue to use TikTok in future – despite the ban on the app across all government devices – arguing it’s an effective tool to reach voters. He made it pretty clear he planned on staying:
@grantshapps This morning the government announced a TikTok ban on government devices. That’s sensible. I’ve never used TikTok on government devices and can hereby confirm I will NOT be leaving TikTok anytime soon! #politics #news #foryoupage #FYP #trend #wolfofwallstreet #imnotleaving #tiktok
Not so much…
Yesterday, two hours after Guido reported the MoD had invited an Extinction Rebellion activist to their annual leadership lectures day, the Army rescinded the invite. Unfortunately for Her Majesty’s forces, they’re still set to be lectured by The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi:
🎉New speaker announcement🎉
— Centre for Army Leadership (@Army_Leadership) November 9, 2021
We are excited to announce that Arwa Mahdawi will be presenting at our Culture and Leadership Conference on Wed 1 Dec 21. Arwa is a journalist for @guardian and author of 'Strong Female Lead'.
Sign up here: https://t.co/OfMVAWY3xg@ArwaM #culture pic.twitter.com/LS2TcsOu0R
Some co-conspirators may know Mahdawi best for her infamous flip-flop op-eds, in which she notoriously accused “toxic masculinity” of killing people via refusal to wear facemasks, then opined that people shouldn’t be shamed for not wearing facemasks. She also wrote that Melania Trump’s new hairdo should “make us very afraid”, then wrote a scathing riposte when AOC’s barnet came under the spotlight.
Just the sort of consistent, strong-minded leadership from which our troops need to learn…
Among her other work, perhaps the Army will be surprised to learn she’s not too keen on the military. In 2017 she slammed the Israeli actress Gal Gadot as she’d “happily spent time in the Israeli army kicking Palestinian ass and supports the IDF”.
She also wrote an op-ed on the BLM riots in the US under the headline, “If violence isn’t the way to end racism in America, then what is?”; and another in which she lamented that Britain’s now “embarrassing” and that Priti Patel is a “ghoul” – all of these opinions no doubt perfectly suited to a day at Sandhurst lecturing the Army. Still, maybe one of our boys will be keen to ask about how to avoid their barrack thermostats being “constantly set to a ‘sexist’ temperature”…
David Williams, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, was unusually honest during his Public Accounts Committee appearance on Monday. He went full-on Sir Humphrey when he came out with “There are only so many ways I can not answer the question”. This classic quote came just minutes after being asked about wasted taxpayers’ money, when he replied:
“We’re not at a stage where, I think, additional money will be squandered…”
Guido imagines at this point Jim Hacker would be calling for an economy drive…
Before the referendum Downing Street coordinated a letter from 12 former military chiefs to the Telegraph claiming that remaining in the EU was “in our national interest”. It quickly fell apart when it emerged one of the generals hadn’t actually signed it and another had decided to back Leave. The letter argued:
“Will Britain be safer inside the EU or outside it? When we look at the world today, there seems to us only one answer. Within the EU, we are stronger… In a dangerous world, it helps us to safeguard our people, our prosperity and our way of life. We therefore believe strongly that it is in our national interest to remain an EU member.”
11 months later, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Stephen Lovegrove says the EU is operationally irrelevant to Britain’s security. This is an extract from Lovegrove’s interview with the new issue of Civil Service World:
EU membership is operationally irrelevant to the multinational and binational arrangements through which the UK currently insures itself, Lovegrove stresses. And, to demonstrate the primacy of NATO over the EU in the UK’s military relationships, he points to a map showing the flag configurations of recent NATO deployments in Poland and the Baltic states. “These are obviously all European countries, but you will see that of the four lead nations, two of them – Canada and the USA – are not European nations. And, before too long, three of them won’t be.”
Lovegrove adds that there is little administrative burden on the MoD caused by Brexit and that few defence policies are “directly affected”. Almost as if the last government got the whole establishment to put their names to a load of Project Fear nonsense…
The MoD spent £4.2 billion on “Technical, Financial Services and Other Services”. A handy statistical bulletin released today itemised the £20 billion of the defence budget spent within the UK in 2014/15:
“The industry group that received the highest level of expenditure from the MOD was ‘Technical, Financial Services and Other Business Services’, at just over £4.2 billion. This covers services for legal, accounting, management consultancy, and technical testing and analysis.”
The amount spent on pen pushers is nearly twice the level of expenditure on “Aircraft and Spacecraft” and approximately 350% more than on “Weapons and Ammunition”. Maybe the MoD is developing “keyboard warriors”…
