John McLellan: Saying it in black and white still carries weight

Even in the digital age there is nothing quite the same as making a bold statement in a newspaper.

Ahead of the Prime Minister’s state visit to the USA, the two leaders put their names to an article in the Washington Post in which they claimed to be “building the institutions that undergird international peace and security”, something that has already exposed them to widespread howls of hypocrisy, most notably from the broadly pro-Tory commentator Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph.

“With our complicity,” wrote Oborne, “the US has again and again resorted to conduct wholly unacceptable: the use of torture and secret prisons, the kidnapping of suspects, targeted assassination, the random killing of civilians and the systematic denial of rights to Muslim suspects.”

Powerful stuff, and even if you accept that in the harsh reality of geopolitics the ends justify the means, it is hard to believe the various Western military interventions across the Muslim world have improved world security one iota. No, there hasn’t been another 9\11 but there has been a 7\7, a Bali, a Madrid and a Mumbai and that there have not been more outrages owes more to a global security and intelligence effort combined with increasing impositions on the public than the direct effect of boots and armour on the ground.

More than four hundred British soldiers have died in Afghanistan, on top of the 179 killed in Iraq. Had it not been for modern body armour and vastly improved medical techniques, the death toll in equivalent operations just 15 years ago would have been double.

Add to that the thousands of casualties and it’s obvious the consequences of these wars will be with us for decades. Now, limbless ex-servicemen are commonplace at the likes of charity runs and these are the victims we can see. Thousands more will suffer for years with stress disorders.

And so yesterday, while Cameron and Obama were busy slapping each other’s backs to aid the digestion of their ball-game hotdogs, three former chiefs of the defence staff, the ex-chief of the general staff and a retired First Sea Lord used the Sun to publicise their letter to Chancellor George Osborne asking for the one per cent ceiling on armed services pay increases to be lifted.

Isn’t it perverse, when welfare payments are rising by over five per cent, that leading military figures have to go public to get a fair deal for men and women who are facing mortal danger on our behalf every day of the week? Danger, it has to be said, made all the more mortal thanks to some of our closest ally’s troops who thought it would be a good idea to urinate on dead Taleban fighters, burn the Koran and massacre innocent women and children.

Pay your troops the money, George, and then do your best to get them out of Afghanistan before it’s too late for them to worry about the cost of living.

It makes the complaints of Goldman Sachs vice-president Greg Smith in the New York Times that he had to put up with making thousands of pounds doing what bankers do seem somewhat trite.

Following a leader

Our own Brian Monteith has also created a minor stooshie with his Scotsman article in which he called for dissolution of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party on the basis that it was no longer Scottish, conservative or Unionist.

Now, how many Scottish Tories agree with him is difficult to gauge accurately, but by the look on defeated leadership candidate Murdo Fraser’s face in the Holyrood debating chamber behind Ruth Davidson there is at least one.

What does seem clearer is that dissatisfaction with the new leader amongst the party rank-and-file is mounting, with her approval rating on the Toryhoose.com website plunging 77 per cent to just below five per cent with Fraser riding high at 80 per cent.

Now, whether a change of leader would make any difference is moot, but a disaster in the May council elections could spark a challenge. Then at least those idle bald men will have a comb to fight over again.