No Man’s Land

As a commentator on UK politics, it seems the good news get fewer and further between these days. That could of course be down to the fact that I’m a miserable bastard, a decade past my sell-by date; it could also be that Britain is drowning in a sea of its own piss. 

This week’s bad news story comes from the UK military, as if they needed any bad news. There was ill-disguised glee from certain sections of the media, as they announced the promotion of Britain’s first female deputy head of the military. General Dame Sharon Nesmith, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff has replaced outgoing General Gwyn Jenkins of the Royal Marines, who was recently made the new National Security Advisor. 

‘What’s the big deal?’ I hear you cry – ‘you misogynistic dinosaur, don’t you know they even let women into the Garrick now?’ Yes I do know, and they’re about as welcome as Lia Thomas’s cock in the female showers. But let me explain my general antipathy: first of all, I seriously question Nesmith’s suitability. While her colleagues may well coo that she is:

“An outstanding officer with an exemplary record of operational service combined with strategic leadership, (she) brings a powerful mix of a moderniser and pragmatist. Her comfort with delivering big capital programmes, increasing lethality and productivity, and embracing technology and looking after our people, are just some of the attributes she will bring and are necessary as we respond to the global security challenges.” 

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, Nesmith is also an advocate of ‘empowerment’, desirous of seeing ‘less hierarchical behaviour’ in the armed forces: 

“just because we have lots of rank structure, doesn’t mean to say that we have to behave in a hierarchical way”. 

Yes luv, it really does. 

She is also a key proponent of greater diversity, as evidenced by her authorship of the Army Race Action Plan.

Such ideological-driven and foolish opinions should immediately disqualify anyone from high office in the services. I’m all for indulging people’s whims where risk is not concerned, but there is nothing remotely commendable about risking the lives of good men, in order to pander to the ridiculous lie of equality. 

The simple and obvious truth of the matter is that women and the military don’t mix. Pansies such as myself don’t either, but that’s what we’re talking about here. I wrote the following back in 2019, and I haven’t changed my mind on a syllable: 

Going to war is a good test for your equality lie because history tends to demonstrate that barbarian hordes beat effete pansies any day of the week. There appears to be no end however, to those who wish to disprove this theory. The military has come under continual pressure in recent years to toe the equality line.

This is bad news for the British Army which has already been stripped to the bone, down from 102,000 soldiers in 2010 to just 78,000 soldiers in the present. It might appear therefore to those of us on Civvy Street that now was not the right time to start worrying about a rebrand. Army decision makers, however, did not concur.

In late 2017, leaked official army documents revealed that plans were afoot to drop not only the historic army crest, but also the ‘to be the best’ motto. Army top brass apparently considered the term to be ‘elitist’, and expensive image consultants had also suggested it was a tad ‘non-inclusive’.

They’re damn right; inclusive they are not, and inclusivity is the one thing an army really doesn’t want to be. An inclusive army is one in which anyone can enlist, and that’s the kind of army that isn’t even going to make it onto the battlefield, let alone stick around to win anything.

The costs are not to be sniffed at either. At a time when military cuts are rife, the estimates are that such a rebrand would run into millions of pounds. Thankfully, such plans have been halted. The Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, stepped in to veto the plans at the eleventh hour. These plans are not in isolation however, and are a symptom of a much wider problem. Consider the British Army’s recent advert ‘keeping my faith’, which featured a unit pausing to wait for a Muslim colleague to pray. Again, inclusivity is being prioritised not only over those most likely to enlist in the army, but also over financial pressures which the army is ill-placed to bear.

But what does finance matter to a government so fixated on inclusion? The current BAME population of the military is only around 7%, but seeing as the government wants that increased to between 10 and 20 percent by 2020, something’s got to give. That something appears to be efficiency.

The British Army is not the only army focusing on everything except winning wars. The Marine Corps Integration Plan of 2013 oversaw the lifting of restrictions on women joining the elite unit. The effectiveness of mixed squads was looked into, and it turns out that all-male squads outperformed mixed squads across the board. All-male squads were faster, more lethal and able to evaluate casualties in less time. They were superior to mixed squads on 93 of 134 tasks, with mixed squads only superior on two. In addition, female marines were six times more likely to get injured than males, and were unable to shoot as accurately.

That noticeable gender disparity might impress some people, and encourage them to give this inclusivity lark a rethink, but not James Joyner, professor of security studies at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University. According to Joyner, the problems arising from the introduction of females into the marines is due to ‘toxic masculinity culture’. Far from it, Professor. The marines do not have a problem with toxic masculinity, they need it. In fact if anyone has any toxic masculinity to sell, I’ve no doubt that the military would be the best place to set up shop.

It remains to be seen how long Nesmith will last, and how much damage she will do. If I were a serving members of the military however, I’d be extremely concerned about this ‘empowerment’ replacing hierarchy – I.e. ‘competence’. On a lighter note, Putin and Xi must be shitting themselves. 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

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