Senior Tory MP Mark Francois has launched a scathing attack on the state of British armed forces and warned that the UK cannot defend itself.
The former Defence Minister accused the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the House of Commons on Thursday for putting “wokery before weaponry.”
The former army officer told MPs that the Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has told the government that the UK will be at war some time in the next few years.
Francois said that the Chancellor’s Spring Budget means in real terms that defence spending is up by £2.5 billion at a time when the MoD are claiming they have hardly any man power.
The senior Tory MP said that there has been a constant stream of “catastrophic errors” over decades leaving the British Army with almost now power as we would only “last a few weeks” in a major war with Russia.
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This comes after former security chiefs warned in a paper published by the New Bletchley Network that the UK must “genuinely prepare for war” to be a credible deterrent.
The published paper reads, “To be credible in deterrence terms we need to prepare genuinely for war and communicate this to potential foes, NATO and allies, and particularly to the British public.
“British Army credibility has been weakened by 20-plus years of hollowing out and diminished fighting power. Army morale is fragile.”
Francois said, “We now have a Ministry of Defence which has become, in recent years, a gigantic, sclerotic bureaucracy; constantly hidebound by needless, self-generated red tape; obsessed with process rather than outcomes.
“In which some senior civil servants are now more interested in wokery than weaponry, endlessly ripped off by some of its own major contractors – such as Boeing – to name but one.
And in which key elements of our fighting equipment are so old – and the procurement system for replacing them so broken – we now cannot fight a major war with Russia for more than a few weeks.”
On Wednesday, the former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has warned that British soldiers in Ukraine “cannot be ruled out.”
Wallace said that “people need to wake up” and realise just how “dangerous Vladimir Putin” really is and that across Europe there is “insecurity.”
Outsourcing firm Capita who recruits for the British Army has seen their share price plummet from £4 to just 13p leading to “three soldiers leaving for everyone they manage to recruit.”
He quipped, “If we think we are likely to deter the likes of Vladimir Putin in this manner we live on a different planet, in a parallel universe, in a fantasy dimension.
He then asked, “Why do we have vehicles that are 60 years old? Why do we have hardly any battle tanks that actually work?
“Why do we have hardly any submarines that regularly put to sea?
Why do we have aircraft carriers which perennially break down when they try to put to sea?
In conclusion Francois said that Britain are too reliant on allies, and warned those allies will also be “relying on Britain to be able to fight.
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