Base Lines

For all Gavin Williamson's hallucinations about new British bases around the world, nowhere near enough people join the Armed Forces for the things that they already want to do, veterans sleep on the streets when they come home, and what is regarded as one of the most elite regiments is currently the latest subject of one of the most successful television franchises of our age, Dancing Chavs for Middle-Class Amusement.

No one with any military experience has been Prime Minister in 40 years, for 27 of which that position has been held by the Leader of the Conservative Party. Ah, yes, the Conservative Party. The party of the public schoolboys and the young Daily Mail readers who used to join up, but who no longer do so. The party of the businessmen who will not employ veterans. The party of the landlords who will not let to veterans. The party of the people who tune in to Dancing Chavs for Middle-Class Amusement.

Even where those businessmen and landlords are Labour supporters, and sometimes even Labour Councillors, then they are most unlikely to be supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, something that hardly any Labour Councillors are. Do this country's numerous Conservative local authorities have exemplary records in employing and housing Service personnel? The streets of the West End and the South Coast say otherwise.

No one who served in Vietnam has ever become President of the United States or ever will, and that office is now held by its third draft dodger. The first two had two terms each, and so will this one. The first was elected as long ago as 1992, a mere 17 years after the end of the conflict. Two distinguished Vietnam veterans have been unsuccessful nominees of the main parties in the present century. Al Gore's record also contrasted starkly with that of George W. Bush.

Likewise, no one who served in Afghanistan or Iraq will ever be Prime Minister. As much as anything else, that would involve revisiting all of the arguments around those wars, and especially around Iraq. Neither party will ever risk that. One is now led, and will be forever, by the people who actively opposed those wars. The other now pretends that it did so.

In any case, the British do not like military politicians. As long ago as 1964, they gave the Premiership to a man who, although he had been of fighting age and perfectly good health, had never worn a uniform, yet who had still managed to emerge from the Second World War with the OBE. He went on to beat a veteran of the Normandy landings two and a half times.

But if, once the Afghanistan and Iraq generation was out of the way, a potential Prime Minister did emerge from a military background, then he or she would not come from the party of the people who no longer sent their offspring into the Armed Forces, who refused to employ veterans, who refused to let accommodation to veterans, and who tuned in for their weekly fix of Dancing Chavs for Middle-Class Amusement.