Revisiting defence

I’m presently shadow-banned on X, therefore demonetised, for reasons not explained. There appears to be a heavy bias in favour of slop which I am not inclined to produce. This, though, is a good thing in that it focuses my mind on more productive endeavours.

It’s been a while since I touched the Manifesto Project. You have to be in a certain mind state to think along those lines, and it’s also difficult to have any motivation when there’s no real outlet for this kind of work - and very little interest in it. Parties of the slop right are not interested in policy development. As such, the Manifesto Project is little more than personal academic exercise to help me develop my thinking. Having done the work myself it gives me a better grounding to evaluate the policy efforts of others as they are published. Sadly, it has no other use.

The original intent of the Manifesto Project was to provide a framework for what something like Restore Britain should look like, as a system of joined up policies based on a system of values. What we’ve seen instead from them is a collection of disparate attempts of varying quality in which they mistake length for sophistication, and there’s no joined-up thinking at all. They reluctantly recognise the need for policy but don’t understand the utility of it.

Their latest policy on policing prompted my to update my own efforts, using the Home Office’s recent white paper as the jumping off point, recognising that policy must take into account the current state of play. While blue sky thinking has its place, serious policy must integrate with reality. None of us have the luxury of remodelling the state according to our own perfect designs. As such, the UK Defence Investment Plan seemed like a good vector upon which to update and rewrite my defence policy.

At just over eleven thousand words, it’s about as long as it needs to be. It touches on most bases without going into too much detail while remaining true to an underpinning philosophy of adaptability, scalability and techno-realism. As ever, feedback is very much appreciated.