...to the uninitiated, our Prime Minister is unlucky, hapless and a poor communicator who despite some errors, has an opportunistic opposition and some slightly dubious senior military advisors who have recently been tainted with party-political affililiations.

To the initiated, this man is singlehandledly responsible for the politicisation of Defence and its serial under-resourcing since 1997. As Chancellor (in charge of all tax-raising and national budgetary decisions), he had near total ownership not only of how much each department received, but also audit over how it was spent. Therefore our output and policy based Strategic Defence Review never stood a chance of being realised as a resourced plan. Blair could make no decision without Brown's approval, as he had no mastery of detail, and wouldn't challenge his symbiotic ally. Brown was therefore part of the flawed decisionmaking that saw us strategically distracted by Iraq, therefore allowing Afghanistan to fester. At no point did the man understand, support or sympathise with the Armed Forces in anything they did as an entity, other than to individual empathise with young working class men and women whom he instinctively felt were being exploited by people from privileged backgrounds who leap-frogged them in life.

You have to understand, this man is a lifelong committed socialist who is dedicated to State control and intervention of all aspects of life. He does not understand international dynamics. He refuses to acknowledge opposing points of view. Any dissent is to be isolated, discredited and then destroyed in detail. He has achieved his political success by the most ruthless form of socialist machine politics. You have to study it to believe it, the way the UK New Labour movement is straight out of George Orwell's 1984 - starting with control of language and the ownership of the single 'narrative'.

Other than that, he's a hell of a fella. We're very lucky to enjoy such enlightened leadership.