I am deeply uncomfortable with a former associate of the International Marxist Group being given the top job in the Ministry of Defence. How would you or I have passed a positive vetting interview if we had been part of an organisation with revolutionary links? How did he pass the vetting process?

Can he be trusted with state secrets?

He showed woeful judgement over the Nimrod Inquest, immediately decrying the findings of the Oxford Coroner without being present for the concluding presentation. He made claims that Industry had declared Nimrod safe when there were no such assurances. Nimrod has now been grounded, just as the Coroner said it should have been last year.

Is he really the right man for the job?

International Marxist Group was a sympathy organisation to Fourth International devout followers of Trotsky;

"Trotskyists regard themselves as working in opposition to both capitalism and Stalinism. Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and believed that a workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was advanced in opposition to the view held by the Stalinists that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union alone.[3] Furthermore, Trotsky and his supporters harshly criticised the increasingly totalitarian nature of Joseph Stalin's rule. They argued that socialism without democracy is impossible. Thus, faced with the increasing lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, they concluded that it was no longer a socialist workers' state, but a degenerated workers' state.[1]"

Don't think ministers go through the same DV procedure that we mere mortals have to endure. I'm sure there are others on the site who can elaborate.

His views weren't secret and he was elected. If people want to vote for marxists, I'll think they're nuts, but in a democracy they're entitled to.

He doesn't have to be subject to vetting because he isn't an employee of the MOD, he's the member of the executive branch of government who runs it.

What people fail to, or refuse to acknowledge is that New Labour, or a good proportion of it are the left wing version of the BNP.

A sizeable majority of them have made their careers via the most extreme branches of socialism including the SWP. When they came to power ther ordered the shredding of their MI5 files as they held the evidence of their betrayal of this country during the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

The problem the Labour Party had was that this was fairly well known and they were unelectable, hence the birth of 'New Labour' and a leader with no history.

None of those clowns would pass DV at least the Tories are only gay and crooked.

The current Brownshirt in charge of the MoD (Bobsworth) was Minister for Armed Forces for the 2 previous years. If he can't be trusted with military secrets, then they've already been lost!

More worryingly...

And of gravest concern ... He's effing useless!

Are we really saying to have access to Top Secret and above there is no need for a Minister to be vetted?

Edited to add, didn't Mandelson have a dodgy moustache? Maybe he shaved it off before taking one of his many Cabinet positions?

Think the scenario through. The electorate vote for a party of former communists. An unelected civil servants says 'you can't be prime minister, you're a former communist'. He replies 'that was no secret before I won the election, nobody voted for you'. Constitutional crisis.

Your only hope, if you want to live in a democracy, is to be very careful who you vote for and do your best to explain to your family and friends why.

I'm sure that if the security services had concerns about him they would have brought them to the attention of the Prime Minister who is responsible for choosing his Ministerial Team. Of course when you have a Prime Minister who holds the Armed Forces in contempt I don't suppose he cares.

One of the biggest problems we may have is that foreign governments may be less willing to share their secrets with us. Or worse still from the POV of a functioning democracy our own sneaky beaky people may be selective about what they allow the ministers to see.

I'd be interested to get an American view on this, they are already deeply uncomfortable about the visa waiver scheme for UK citizens. Wonder if they are having similar thoughts about revolutionary Bob and shared military secrets.

I do wonder what Gordon Brown was thinking about when he appointed Ainsworth as the Secretary of State for Defence. Mind you we are all too aware about Brown's judgement. He is the man who believes in a new era of transpairancy (that's how he says it..), and promptly announces a secret Inquiry into the Iraq War.

You couldn't make any of this up.

Gordon told us that Ainsworth is an excellent choice and that his appointment is supported by defence cheifs. Any suggestion that its a good thing that those chiefs are constrained from saying what they really think is unhelpful.

Anyway who would you have picked? There isn't anyone with any talent in ZaNU Labour. They scrapped the bottom of the barrel 12 years ago, anything since then is something you'd scrape off your boots if you trod in it.

Ministers aren't vetted, and they have a right of access to material within their domain. However the outer offices and PUSs are vetted and should be managing the communication of issues to the minister appropriately. Essentially they can't stop the minister asking for, and gaining access to material, but they should be discouraging it.

That's democracy for you

However their risk is reviewed by Security Service and the PM advised of the level of risk each potential minister bears before the appointment.

In the same way that those of us who are vetted may have caveats on our files that influence where we can work, the risk recommendation from BSS may steer the appointment.

But once appointed, does Marxist Bob have access to files marked with the highest levels of security? If he insists?

Without having gone through a formal vetting process?

Yes, thats the long and the short of it.


Good here isn't it?

Yes, in principle.

Normally one would be deeply suspicious of a security service that was seeking to keep secrets from democratic oversight but I fear that we don't live in normal times.

ZaNU Labour have introduced a terrible democratic deficit and cannot really be considered as a legitimate government. Fortunately they have less than a year left. Unfortunately they could do quite a bit of damage in a year.

Well that's just great, according to "Working Class Tory" Marxist Bob never became a full member of International Marxist Group because he was "too extreme"!

Check out the full list of communists and socialists in the Cabinet. I lifted it from WCT website.


"Only mildly, because we're already ruled by extremists. Alan Johnson considered himself a Communist and a Marxist. Jack Straw changed the name of the Leeds University Labour Society to the Leeds University Socialist Society when he became President of it, and withdrew support from the Labour party. Not only that, he was arrested in Chile in the same year - 1966 - for "disrupting international relations". Peter Mandelson left the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) in 1971 to join the Young Communist League, and was so extreme he swanned off to Cuba in the 70s, where he helped organise a USSR-funded meeting of left wing students and groups - Arthur Scargill was even there. Surprisingly, for such an utterly dull man, Bob Ainsworth was a candidate member of the International Marxist Group in the early 80s - but was rejected for being too extreme, apparently. Too extreme for Marxism, yet he's our Defence Minister. That fills me with a great deal of confidence. Even more surprising, to the extent that my jaw dropped to the floor when I learnt this a while ago, Alistair Darling was in a ridiculous amount of extreme left organisations. He was in the Trotskyist Fourth International, for example. He joined the Labour party in 1977 (he was possibly the only person to do so in that year), while still very much under the influence of his Marxist/Leninist/Communist/Trotskyist chums - a clear signal that he, and presumably many of the Labour party, joined while personally holding an ideology far, far, FAR to the left of what Labour is now."

Nige, I did tell you and the ideology of New Labour is much further to the left than you imagine.

Not to mention the current US regime...
Kruschev's prophesy coming true?

Let's hear it for Denis Healey .. as he ain't dead yet I can't print what I think.

Why has this gripped you so much now nigegilb?

Bobsworth has had access to everything for the past 2 years! If he's going to pass it on to unsavoury characters, it will have already gone.