Britain's chief naval officer has been left humiliated after David Cameron said he had summoned him to Downing Street to challenge his claims that the fleet could not continue the Libya campaign indefinitely without affecting other naval operations.
The prime minister told MPs he had met Sir Mark Stanhope, and that the first sea lord now agreed that the navy would be able to "sustain this mission as long as we need to".
The meeting was the culmination of a turbulent 24 hours for Stanhope, who infuriated No 10 by talking about the strains on the navy, which is heavily involved in the Afghanistan mission as well as in Libya.
In a briefing on Monday, Stanhope said ministers would have to "make challenging decisions" once Nato's 90-day extension to the Libya campaign ended.
"Beyond that we might have to request the government to make some challenging decisions about priorities," he said. "There are different ways of doing this. It's not simply about giving up standing commitments. We will have to rebalance."
He said a ship might have to be diverted from "around home waters".
His remarks provoked uproar at No 10, which regarded them as a PR gift to the Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, as well as misrepresenting the state of the service. But serving staff privately rallied to him, and former officers provided public support, saying Stanhope was only stating the obvious, especially now the navy has axed ships and thousands of personnel as part of the government's strategic defence and security review (SDSR).
Anyone got any games they can think of that would model this level of over-taxation of forces based on economic investments? Third Reich, maybe?
By: Brant
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