As Eliot Wilson has highlighted, this election has been more defence-focused than any since the 1980s. Rishi Sunak has touted his 2.5 per cent target and warned about an increasingly dangerous world, as well displaying his enthusiasm for national service. By contrast, Keir Starmer has sparked a row over scrapping the Troubles amnesty, alongside some phallic posturing over Trident.
With a Third World War around the corner, this belated focus on defence must be welcomed, even if it is wholly disproportionate to the horrors coming down the track. Nonetheless, the biggest defence story has not been one about looming conflict – despite Nigel Farage’s efforts – but the last: Sunak’s decision to skedaddle home early from the D-Day commemorations for an ITV interview.
Enough energy has been expended on that particular disaster to not revisit it now. But suffice to say that it is a deep self-inflicted wound for a Prime Minister who has tried his best to woo veteran voters.
Sunak who appointed Johnny Mercer to the Cabinet to represent Veterans’ Affairs, three years on from Boris Johnson’s decision to establish a particular Office for it. He oversaw the passage of the Northern Ireland Legacy Act. The Conservative manifesto contains offers of cut-price rail travel to veterans and tax breaks to those who employ them, as well as a new Veterans’ Bill.
Sunak and Mercer’s stated aim is to make the UK the “best country in the world” to be a veteran. It wil take more than a new railcard to catch up with Washington’s £300 billion Department for Veteran’s Affairs. But there are worse ambitions to have.
With two million veterans in the UK, it might also be electorally benefical – one of the many reasons why Sunak’s abrupt D-Day departure was so damaging. It also helps explain Mercer’s row with Fred Thomas – the Labour candidate in Plymouth Moor View.
Thomas is a former Royal Marine. He hopes to neutralise Mercer’s “trump card” of a military service record. Standing against the former army officer in a seat he has held since 2015 and which contains many veterans and a naval base, Thomas hopes both to blunt claims Labour is soft on defence and to force Mercer to promote something other than his efforts for veterans.
But Mercer and other veterans have taken umbrage at a description of Thomas’s service record. A Guardian interview with the candidate last year claimed his seven years in the “elite commando force” had involved time spent in “combat missions”. According to the piece, “sources” claimed Thomas had spent time in the special forces, about which he remained “tightlipped”.
Mercer is sceptical. At a recent hustings, he suggested the newspaper’s comments about Thomas’s time in combat were untrue.He thought the claims “deeply offensive and disrespectful to those who do…shed blood for the nation” for Thomas to act untruthfully.
As Mercer outlines, Thomas was heckled at a hustings, caused by the “sheer rage of someone unbelievably trying to pretend about their military service” in the face of those who had seen action. According to Mercer, given “the time period [Thomas] served” and “the unit he was part of” his claims were “simply not…plausible”. He was, in Mercer’s phrasing, a “Walter Mitty”.
This prompted outrage from Labour. A source described Mercer’s attack as “Trumpian” to The Times. Alastair Campbell called it “disgusting and desperate”. Keir Starmer called it a sign “desperation” and that the Tories were for “party first through and through”.
Thomas has said he remains “unable to discuss” much of his service – something Mercer is “keenly aware of”. The suggestion is that Mercer is using Thomas’s inability to disclose to suggest he is lying about his service. Is he exploiting a vacuum?
Mercer would suggest not. Not only because it’s difficult within the small confines of our shrunken armed forces to keep one’s service quiet for too long, but because Thomas has made a very big thing about this Guardian interview: across his website, and on the stump. He also suggests that Thomas personally suggested to him that Labour told him he could not talk about it.
Who to believe? Since Thomas now claims he was “misreported” by the Guardian, his footing seem less firm – especially as he has had ten months to clear things up. Labour now suggests the Guardian was wrong that Thomas had been in combat.
Mercer has never been unwilling to court controversy, especially when veterans’ interests are on the line. Hence why has oft been popular in our Cabinet League Table. For all the heat generated by this row, it seems very much a case of Mercer 1, Thomas 0.
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Author: William Atkinson
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