1 Boring Old Man

What the military chiefs said about Gordon Brown
^{Gordon Brown hit back at former military chiefs who accused him of starving the armed forces of funds when he was Chancellor.}
Telegraph.uk.co
11 Mar 2010

Mr Brown gave evidence last Friday at the Chilcot Inquiry into the war in Iraq, where he insisted he had always provided military commanders with the equipment they requested. The following day he made a visit to Afghanistan. But at least three former military chiefs criticised Mr Brown, branding his Chilchot evidence "disingenuous".

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff, said defence spending over the period while Mr Brown was Chancellor was cut by more than £1 billion a year.

"I know that the Prime Minister ‘gets’ this now. But no amount of rewriting history can compensate for the years when he neither understood defence properly nor was persuaded to pay for it fully."

General Lord Guthrie, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said: "To say Gordon Brown has given the military all they asked for is simply not true.

"They asked for more helicopters but they were told they could not have any more…"

"He cannot get away with saying ‘I gave them everything they asked for’, that is simply disingenuous."

Admiral Lord Boyce, Chief of the Defence Staff up to the start of the Iraq war in 2003, said of Mr Brown: "He’s dissembling. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds."