A government’s first duty is to defend its people, but there can be no doubt at all that the UK’s defences are in a parlous state. A history of cuts, a failed recruiting system wracked by incompetence and an evangelically zealous pursuit of diversity to the exclusion of the traditional recruiting base, coupled with catastrophic waste in the procurement cycle, have left our defences unfit for purpose.
Other priorities for the UK government mean that the proposed – and badly needed – rise in defence spending to a minimum of 2.5 per cent of GDP have been shelved (until the economic conditions permit, according to the government). Meanwhile other costs are allowed to escalate uncontrolled: there are now more asylum seekers accommodated in hotels in the UK than we have soldiers accommodated in barracks. This is costing around £8m a day or £2.9 billion a year (more than 5 per cent of the defence budget).
The failure to recruit and the woeful performance of Capita, the private company that holds the contract for recruitment, means that the slide is inexorably downward with around 20 per cent more people leaving the armed forces than are joining each year. Recruiting targets have been missed consistently.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) itself is to blame for much of this trend due to its ridiculously aggressive diversity and inclusion strategy. This has been shown to alienate the core group which is likely to join the military – white males – yet it has failed to achieve any significant success in recruiting or retaining those diverse groups it aspires to. This will be for two reasons: first that most of the targeted groups – with the exception of white females – are still comparatively small as proportions of the population, and second that they appear to have far less interest in military service. In some cases, such as the RAF, discrimination against white males in recent times has reached the level of being unlawful.