Front-Line Services

An independent security think tank has threatened the Freedom of the Seas by implying that eleven thousand million pounds' worth of cuts in Britain's independent, part-privatised, US-owned nuclear deterrent would not result in our immediate subjection to a Shock and Awe campaign by the Mad Mullahs of Tehran. At present the policy is to keep one submarine always on patrol, which has helped to maintain peace in Europe for the past sixty years and was instrumental in the removal of the Berlin Wall; nevertheless, the think tank's report recommends ending this practice and simply keeping a submarine ready to sail at short notice should it happen that intelligence can be sexed up sufficiently to suggest an imminent threat to somewhere more important than Scotland.

The think tank's name, Royal United Services Institute, forms the acronym RUSI, which has a telltale whiff of Sovietism about it. Daveybloke's cuddly backbench blimps, not to mention his barking Minister for Manly Pursuits, are unlikely to be mollified by the mere fact that the Soviet Union ceased to exist a decade or two ago.