Six months into his job as defence secretary and John Hutton still struggles to put into words his admiration for the troops who serve under him. ‘Politicians who run out of adjectives have got a problem,’ he says, ‘but there are no adjectives I can use to properly describe the extraordinary courage and heroism of our guys.’
It’s an admiration rooted in his 17 years representing a seat with close links to the army and defence industry. Last year he published a book on the local battalions that fought in the first world war inspired by stories related to him by his constituents. But no book could prepare him for the reality of facing the daily casualty reports that arrive on his desk every morning: ‘You can’t write any book that is going to equip you to do that.’
The deaths in March of two young recruits at the hands of the Real IRA were particularly galling for the defence secretary. ‘It’s gut wrenching’ he says. ‘We thought we were beyond that now, but there’s a hardcore of dissident republicans who are determined to sabotage the peace process and they’ve decided to target unarmed British service personnel in what can only be described as a cowardly, criminal act.’
Hutton believes that ‘the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland will be sickened’ by the actions of the republican dissidents. ‘We’re working very closely with the PSNI to make sure that these people don’t spoil the prospects that are there in Northern Ireland.’ He adds: ‘We’ve got to catch these guys.’
With the fight against al-Qaida dominating the agenda since 9/11, the return of the republican threat seems like a throwback to an earlier age. Following the recent terror attacks in Lahore and Mumbai, however, the defence secretary is keen to stress the danger still posed by ‘these disparate terrorist groups’ who, while not formally linked, he says are united in their ideology by ‘a perversion of Islam’.
‘We should not beat around the bush, these are the new Nazis,’ he says, ‘because they are opposed to our values, our way of life, the freedoms, the liberties, the freedom of thought and expression – all the things that are fundamental to us in the west and defined our culture for thousands of years, and in fact the cultures of others as well.’
While Hutton is clear about ‘the existential threat to our values’ still posed by Islamic extremism, he is keen to emphasise that ‘we cannot rely exclusively on military means as the best defence against terrorism’. He urges ‘a broad political and economic programme to deal with, or to engage with, those parts of the world where there is a very substantial threat of terrorism and terrorism being exported to Europe’.
‘And that is what we’re doing,’ he insists, ‘that absolutely encapsulates our strategy for Afghanistan and the emerging strategy for Pakistan’ – which, he is anxious to stress, ‘is also the victim of terrorism, not the culprit’.
For now the focus of Britain and Nato’s strategy remains on the fight in Afghanistan. While the Commander of Nato and US forces General David McKiernan made clear in a recent BBC interview that he was ‘very satisfied’ with British efforts in Helmand, his comments that coalition forces were ‘not winning’ against the Taliban in large parts of the south reignited debate in the media about the success of the British mission in southern Afghanistan. ‘We have made progress in Helmand,’ the defence secretary says. ‘I take very strong issue with those who say that we haven’t.’ He concedes that ‘we haven’t solved every problem in Afghanistan,’ but that ‘people have got to be realistic about that’. ‘We’ve got to do more, but at the end of the day this is a classic counter-insurgency campaign, it’s going to take time.’
And despite the fallout from the Iraq war, the defence secretary suggests that there is still a role to play for the military in promoting human rights abroad, provided we ‘operate within a rule of law, a framework’. He warns that the left has too often ‘ended up on the side of the dictators, excusing the dictators, justifying non-intervention’ which isn’t the place of a ‘progressive party’. He recalls the words of his second-world-war veteran father who said ‘the Labour party has got to stand up to dictators; that’s what we do, we don’t bow the knee to these people’.
Hutton’s support for military intervention in Iraq is not the only issue that has placed him at odds with many on the left of the Labour party. Defending the government’s commitment to renewing Trident, he says it would be ‘wrong and irresponsible’ to unilaterally set aside Britain’s deterrent without ‘concrete progress’ in ‘nuclear disarmament talks’. Not only would no other country ‘follow suit’, but ‘Britain would be less well defended as a result, not better defended’.
Hutton hopes that between now and the end of the lifetime of the Vanguard submarine’s replacement in 2050 ‘the world will have come to a place where it is free of nuclear weapons’. He adds: ‘I think we’ve got to continue with our long-term aspiration for that objective, absolutely.’ But he is also clear that there are ‘real genuine risks out there which you can’t just wish away’ and the most important thing for Britain should be the ability to ‘defend ourselves’.
While Hutton is preoccupied with Britain’s security abroad, the government is facing an increasingly difficult political battle at home, with the Conservatives maintaining a double-digit lead in the polls over Labour. ‘I don’t read too much into opinion polls today,’ the defence secretary shrugs. ‘I’d rather we were 13 points ahead but you’ve got to be realistic.’
The defence secretary praises Gordon Brown for showing ‘very clear leadership during these very difficult times’. Britain, he suggests, would be ‘heading for a much worse recession, a much deeper set of problems, both economic and social’ if the government ‘were doing half the things David Cameron and George Osborne have indicated they would do’. He adds, ‘I think the Conservatives have shown themselves to be maybe a good opposition but a lousy government in waiting.’
Hutton is cautious, however, about the long-term political benefits of an ‘Obama bounce’ for the Labour party following the G20 summit in April. ‘We can’t pin our hopes on what other people do, we can only pin our hopes on what we do for ourselves.’ ‘Whether we win a fourth term or not is down to us, it’s not down to President Obama or anyone else.’ This means Labour has ‘got to continue to show what our long-term values are, how they can be applied today, even through these difficult times’.
Crucially, the former business secretary believes that the Labour party must not draw the wrong conclusions from the current crisis in the global economy. He stands by his comments made at a Progress lecture last year that Labour should be ‘enthusiastic’ about financial success. Those ‘best placed to judge’ whether rewards are justifiable ‘are the people who own businesses, not politicians,’ he says.
Furthermore, Hutton sees no reason for the government to ride back on its commitment to public service reform. ‘I don’t buy the argument today that somehow the era of big government has returned.’ The ‘key anchors’ of the government’s reform agenda – ‘about personalisation; about greater choice; empowering professionals to be able to innovate, to take responsibility, to change services that aren’t working well, and to have a zero tolerance of failure’ – have been ‘very clearly set out’. He cites the work of James Purnell at his former ministry, the Department for Work and Pensions, as ‘a perfect example of how we are applying New Labour values to the current crisis’. Reform of the Royal Mail, he says, is also ‘an important way we can signal that, even in difficult times, we are able to make difficult decisions’.
Unlike many of the government’s critics on the left, therefore, Hutton believes ‘the public is not interested in textbook socialism and an ideology that has its roots, not in the reality of the modern world, but in the dim and distant past of the former world. People who hark back to a more traditional, socialist agenda are the people who would have prevented us from winning in 1997 and 2001 and 2005’.
‘You’ve always got a choice in politics,’ Hutton insists. For the defence secretary, that choice is clear.