Tightening up on paper clips

Having a "slimmed-down management structure" might convince some people that he is answering the call to cut government spending.

But Fox is an adamant defender of British attempts to strut about the globe as a major military power, which drains billions every year from the Treasury.

He acknowledges having spent £250 million - almost certainly an underestimate - already on the bombing of Libya and is determined to press ahead with this criminal activity.

That is in addition to the war in Afghanistan, where British troops have suffered more than 2,000 casualties, including over 370 deaths, the vast majority since 2006 when they were deployed in Helmand province.

How many Afghans they may killed is unknown because the military occupation forces feel no compulsion to count them.

The military adventure in Iraq ordered by Tony Blair in 2003 registered 6,000 British casualties, including around 180 deaths.

Once again, the level of Iraqi civilian victims was not recorded by the US perpetrators of the invasion or by their loyal British followers.

It is certainly in the hundreds of thousands and probably over a million once the toll of the murderous sanctions regime imposed in 2001, the allied invasion and the ongoing bloodletting, including sectarian car bombs, is tabulated.

While Washington has met the bulk of the financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at $800 billion and $450bn respectively, our contribution to these deathfests has not been negligible.

British military spending alone was estimated last year at a combined total of £20bn for both countries.

However, this does not reflect either troops' pay or the cost of medical treatment for the thousands of wounded personnel.

Such loss of life, injury and depletion of financial resources could be justified if Britain had faced military attack and mobilised to defend itself, but that is not the case.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are unnecessary conflicts that have made bad situations worse.

They have served a US-led agenda that takes in energy resources and regional military-political hegemony and, despite lip service to democracy and human rights, the wars have proved a disaster for local civilians.

However, successive British governments' direct involvement in imperialist wars as the US president's dependable retainer does not tell the full story of their pathetic aspiration to world military superpower status.

There has been no daylight between new Labour and the Tories in their commitment to the Trident white elephant of a supposedly independent nuclear deterrent.

While no British Prime Minister would be able to launch a nuclear warhead-tipped rocket without White House approval, each one has cherished Trident as Britain's free-entry card to international gatherings' top table.

Chancellor George Osborne sets the price of replacing Trident at £20bn - others estimate £100bn - but, more crucially, Fox has set in train preparations for replacement even though there has been no parliamentary or popular approval for it.

The nuclear obsession is not only financially prohibitive but it undermines democratic accountability too.

Fox's crusade against waste in his ministry is an irrelevant sideshow against the institutionalised squandermania of the military state, which stands in the way of Britain being modernised through an industrial strategy, quality public services and human investment.