Keir Starmer has vowed to create a ‘squaddies tsar’ if he wins the election. This ‘Armed Forces Commissioner’ would represent the military and their families and sit outside the military chain of command. But it’s here that the problems start.
The Labour leader says this issue is personal to him because his uncle served aboard HMS Antelope in the Falklands War. But Starmer could do with turning to another military reference point – the 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan – to appreciate why such a ‘tsar’ could cause trouble.
‘I don’t gripe to you, Reiben,’ captain Miller explains as his soldiers traipse through the French bocage. ‘I’m a captain. There’s a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up.’
The exchange in Spielberg’s World War II epic illustrates the importance of the military command structure and why it only works when there is trust and good leadership.
Such an overseer creates a moral hazard for military leadership
This relationship would be left exceedingly vulnerable if Starmer’s plans for a ‘Squaddies Tsar’ come to pass. On the face of it, the proposal seems rather sensible. Why not have somebody who can represent soldiers’ concerns to the highest levels of government and deal with failures within the services on their behalf? However, it belies a fundamental lack of understanding about how our armed forces and its oversight works. This is concerning for a contender who hopes to exert control over the most potent and direct arm of the state.
Military effectiveness relies on trust. As an officer in the British Army, I relied on my soldiers implicitly and they relied on me. That trust is built on foundations of shared training and competence, butm more importantly, on a shared understanding that servicemen and women can rely on each other for support on, and off, the battlefield.
The armed forces is unique among public services, because the ‘contract’ recruits sign up to is explicit: this sets out that the needs of the services are paramount. If taken to its logical conclusion, this can mean laying down one’s life. The other side of the contractual ledger commits the services to levels of support and leadership commensurate with what it demands of its servicemen and women.
This demand is understood within the armed forces as being crucial to their fighting power. That is not to say that there is a cold, calculating abdication of responsibility of the military on provisioning personnel with housing or healthcare. It’s true that there have been failings on these fronts across history, but it is a vital principle that there is trust across the chain-of-command to do the right thing for the services – which ultimately achieves the inimitable mission our armed forces are tasked with.
To outsource this function risks undermining that fundamental principle. It would perpetuate an atmosphere of distrust whereby commanders would fear that if they prioritise military objectives they might make themselves open to facing complaint. If so, this would erode the fighting power of our military as the leadership fears a bureaucratic backlash from an ombudsman incapable of contextualising its unique nature.
Such an overseer also creates a moral hazard for military leadership. The cornerstone of trust within the military relies upon effective leadership; that trust and leadership are mutually reinforcing. But if this leadership is undermined, the chain is broken. What’s more, to effectively outsource soldiers’ welfare to someone outside the chain-of-command means military officers would no longer feel a need to focus as much on personnel welfare. This risks toxifying leadership to the extent that servicemen and women are reduced to a resource for achieving a mission, rather than an essential servant of the people.
Ultimately, we already have safeguards in place within the armed forces: swathes of teams to deal with bullying, veterans’ advice, education, and accommodation; parliamentary oversight in the form of the defence select committee; and service boards, composed of military and civilian personnel. They are not perfect but exist to ensure the chain-of-command is respected, personnel are treated fairly, political priorities are met and the mission of the armed forces, and its effectiveness, is maintained.
Instead of appointing an inquisitor-in-chief, a better solution is to hand military leaders more power and allow them to retain the responsibility for acting as a ‘squaddies tsar’.
This proposal from Starmer suggests the Leader of the Opposition’s office was scrabbling around for a policy they could dump out ahead of armed forces week. But while Labour’s leader might claim to speaking up for squaddies, his plan exposes a dangerous naïveté about the way the military works.
Link to original, published in The Spectator on 20 Jun 2023.
