BRITISH PRIME minister David Cameron has opted for a limited Cabinet reshuffle following the resignation yesterday of defence secretary Liam Fox, who was embroiled in a controversy over links with a friend who acted as an unofficial adviser.
The resignation, though not unexpected, became inevitable after it emerged that Dr Fox’s friend, Adam Werrity, had been funded by a collection of companies and individuals with ties to US defence companies.
In his resignation letter, Dr Fox, who was beaten by Mr Cameron in the 2005 battle for the Conservative Party’s leadership, said he had “mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred”.
He said he was resigning with “great sadness”, and leaving the ministry of defence “proud to have overseen the long overdue reforms” to the £40 billion-a-year department and the British military that will “shape them to meet the challenges of the future”.
Replying, Mr Cameron said Dr Fox and his wife, Jesme, “have always been good friends”, adding that Dr Fox had “done a superb job” in the ministry of defence, where he had been faced with a multibillion hole in funding left by the Labour administration.
Despite the resignation, it appears, for now at least, that a cabinet office inquiry into the conduct of Mr Werrity, who was Dr Fox’s best man at his wedding and who accompanied him to dozens of foreign meetings despite his lack of security clearance, will be published.
Faced with the loss of Dr Fox, Mr Cameron opted for a limited reshuffle, appointing transport secretary Philip Hammond to defence and moving upcoming Conservative economic secretary Justine Greening into the Transport brief.
Labour’s shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, said the allegations against Dr Fox, which have dominated Westminster for over a week, were always going to end in him either resigning or being sacked. “I wanted the truth, the whole truth and I wanted it all in the open.
“And it now seems that that truth is unpalatable – it’s inconsistent with Liam staying in government and he’s resigned. We wait to see the details of exactly how he explains it,” Mr Murphy said.
“I think that once this whole thing started to be exposed, it seemed clear that [he] had broken the rules of government. That full truth is clearly unpalatable. The puzzle for a lot of people now is why David Cameron worked so hard to protect the defence secretary’s job,” he continued.
Dr Fox’s departure, despite his unpopularity among some military chiefs over the scale of his reforms and cutbacks, was greeted with concern inside the ministry of defence last night, with officials saying that they feared the effects of “a new round of instability”.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell said Dr Fox’s resignation was “inevitable”.
He added: “The point arises at which the pressure simply becomes more than an individual can sustain and, indeed, more than the political system can sustain.”
Popular with the Tory right wing, Dr Fox is unlikely now to prove a thorn in Mr Cameron’s side from the backbenches, particularly after it emerged that Mr Werrity had been receiving payments from the G3 Good Governance Group, which has links with US neo-conservatives.
In addition, Mr Cameron’s position has been eased because Dr Fox quit, rather than having to be sacked, while the Scot’s credibility has been seriously diminished among his colleagues, who view his relationship with Mr Werrity as bizarrely reckless.
During his time in office, he was less than supportive when Mr Cameron first decided on military action in Libya, while letters warning of damage to the morale of the British military and a call for cuts in overseas aid were quickly leaked to the media.
His actions then were interpreted by Downing Street as signals that he was continuing to curry favour with right-wing Conservative MPs and that he had not given up ambitions to lead the Conservatives.
In 2005, following the departure of Michael Howard from the party leadership, he campaigned in the subsequent party election campaign as a social conservative, coming third with 51 votes from MPs, compared to the 90 received by Mr Cameron.
