How the Iran War has exposed the absurd state of the UK's Armed Forces

We are now at the point where the French military are doing more to assist the defence of Cyprus, and therefore our own sovereign RAF bases on that island, than our own forces are able to do. The French navy is already providing its nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and accompanying protection vessels while HMS Dragon remains in dock awaiting supplies before it can even set off.

Belatedly the Labour government is considering sending one of our aircraft carriers, HMS Prince of Wales, to the Mediterranean instead of to the North Atlantic near Greenland. Unfortunately so low has our navy fallen, it will struggle to provide the Prince of Wales with the necessary protection and we would need other countries to supply that.

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The possibility of US military operations towards Iran was already being intimated at the time of Donald Trump’s Venezuelan intervention and the large-scale public protests in Iran against its brutal theocratic regime. It is my understanding the Royal Navy was suggesting the posting of a vessel to Cyprus to provide additional air cover for our forces there – but our government chose to dismiss it.

I know many people who believe the failure to equip our forces, train the people who volunteer and allow the pay and conditions of recruits to fall low beyond disbelief is entirely intentional, in part so we will throw our lot in with a European military in the name of common defence.

The problem is different nations in the European Union (which drives the momentum on this pan-national pipedream) have their own interests in asset-stripping our defence industry and fighting for their national interests while marginalising our own.

As if to highlight the absolute irrationality and absurdity of our politicians’ detachment from the real world was the announcement last month that the Royal Navy will help defend Ireland’s waters to help counter Russian threats. The RAF already protects Irish airspace, because Ireland has no air force capability to speak of, now our navy is adding the patrolling of Ireland’s coastline to its list of duties because the Irish Navy only comprises of four available ships and a complement of barely 700 active personnel.

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Of course, co-operation with neighbours makes sense, but it should be reciprocal, and it should start with Ireland taking its defence spending seriously and building a stronger navy and air force so that it is not reliant on our own depleted and overstretched resources.

We should also abandon the Chagos deal with Mauritius which has, as was predicted, undermined our relationship with the United States and signalled we will make more concessions in Gibraltar, Cyprus and the Falklands.

There is a reason why such places are important. When the UK voluntarily unravelled its Empire after the Second World War, these pins on the global map represented key strategic points from which we could preserve our national interests in maintaining the free trade that provided for both our domestic economy and international exports.

Just as such locations had been important in the Second World War, so they also were important in the Cold War that helped, in the main, keep a balanced peace. They remain important now.

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The Labour government has become an existential threat to our sovereign freedom and security. When called upon to defend us and our national interests, it has neither the defence capabilities necessary nor the savvy political will to do so.

The Prime Minister’s foreign policy approach has been to adopt international appeasement to practically any foreign interests over our own – from the divided and conflicted EU that has difficulty in reaching a common view to individual EU countries such as Spain which covet our territory.

The Labour government continues mistakenly to rely upon patchy and unreliable international law that countries which threaten our very existence themselves ignore. It harbours Cabinet ministers, such as Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who believe in reparations for the sins of slavery, despite Britain being the one country that spilled blood and paid for ending the international slave trade in the 19th century.

We have government ministers of all ranks who, in the past and now, give the interests of our serving personnel a lower priority than those attempting to kill them. Why would anyone wish to sign up, when they might find the rules of engagement are changed decades later to be deployed against our forces?

It is no wonder recruitment to every branch of our forces is so difficult when our politicians denigrate the values, history and benefits of what Britain did for populations on every continent. Our country and the freedoms we once enjoyed (but which are constantly under attack) have to be worth fighting for and those that enter the forces have to be treated well and given cause to be proud.

All the governing parties must take their share of the blame for the unpalatable truth that we have a lack of equipment and what equipment we do have is often unavailable due to repairs or having forces personnel to work them. Likewise, replacements have been the subject of procurement scandals that make the CalMac ferries look like toy boats for the bath tub.

Although the UK is not a direct participant, the Iran War is showing the threat to this country’s independence if we do not defend ourselves morally and financially. We must reverse the demeaning of our country and the reducing of its defences.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org