Down in flames...

Bob Ainsworth gargled his way through his defence statement just now in the Commons.

With an air force base closing and a reduction in the Harrier and Tornado jet forces, I’ve no doubt papers will present it as a downgrading of the RAF in the morning.

Bob said the cuts were needed to boost support to the forces in Afghanistan.

But putting aside the fact that our forces have been under-funded – not because it’s insignificant, because it’s taken and everyone else will be discussing it – the role of the RAF has been in question for some time.

Defence minds I’ve consulted on both sides of the House have said the RAF’s time is coming to an end.

Rather than having a dedicated air force in the future, a more likely and affordable scenario, they say, is to have beefed up air capabilities in both the army and navy.

No one is prepared to say that in public of course, because who would want to cut back on Winston Churchill’s brave “few”.

I fear, however, that this is another step along the road to that end.

Sending Bob to Coventry, I mean Budapest, I mean Bratislava

An announcement just came over the Press Gallery speaker system.

“This is an announcement: Number 10 would like to say that the defence ministers' meeting is in Bratislava, not wherever they said it was.”

Picture: Bob Ainsworth sitting in an empty room in Budapest looking at his watch.

What's lurking down the back of Ainsworth's sofa?

I can just picture Bob Ainsworth one afternoon reaching down the back of his sofa looking for a jelly baby he dropped when a surprised look comes over his face.

“Hello, what’s this?” he says, pulling the end of an M16 assault rifle from underneath a silk cushion, “I’ve been looking for that everywhere – hold on there’s something else here…”

Low and behold 20 minutes later he has found billions of pounds worth of lost Ministry of Defence equipment.

Night goggles, machine guns, those jet engines needed an extra hard tug to get out – and one of them was ruined because it had a jelly baby lodged in its exhaust pipe.

Then later that day while clearing out the attic Bob gets surprised again when he lifts up an old box of Abba records only to find 50 armoured fighting vehicles behind it.

He says in his gurgling voice: “Oh there they the are…”

The National Audit Office (NAO) has found that in total the MoD could not account for £6.6 billion of kit – let’s just say that figure again, £6.6 billion.

But it’s ok because officials say the kit isn’t actually lost. It is in fact an “extrapolation” of the NAO’s audit. Did you hear that troops on the front line? It’s ok, it’s an extrapolation.

The Financial Times reports that the shortcomings have triggered an overhaul of procedures – now one person will be responsible for tracking front-line equipment and supplying the Afghan campaign.

Anyone up for the job?

Ainswort loses his H

Bob Ainsworth’s “H” was all over the place at defence questions just now.

I became suspicious when an extra H found its way into a sentence where it wasn’t welcome.

Troops had apparently been hit by a determined “hambush”, said the Defence Secretary.

Moments after it became clear that the H had been borrowed from a later comment, when Ainsworth explained he was getting troops more “elicopters” as soon as possible.