The army can’t be deployed for every crisis

Last week, the government published its blueprint for how it intends to remodel the army. According to the plan, it won’t matter that the number of regular troops is being reduced to the smallest size since the Napoleonic wars because the remaining forces will be more ‘agile, integrated, lethal and expeditionary’. A strange theme is emerging in Boris Johnson’s government: the Prime Minister sees the army as the solution to any given problem — yet he is cutting it back to a record low size.

Like Tony Blair before him, Johnson likes to deploy troops — but to help him win battles against his own government machine. He announced this week that the army will be helping out with a speeded-up vaccine booster programme.

His ministers like the responsiveness of the military. Troops do not complain about their working hours. They work weekends if they have to. They are being drafted in to drive ambulances to make up for a shortfall in NHS staff and, in October, they were called up to drive petrol tankers.