Former SAS commander Richard Williams has told GB News that new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis “is going to deliver absolutely nothing other than some words delivered in a new accent”.
On Sir Keir Starmer, Williams, a former Commanding Officer of 22 SAS, said: “He’s living in a cloud cuckoo land. A political bomb has gone off in defence, and the bomb has alerted everybody to what we all suspected, and many knew, is there’s not enough money. The legal basis for military operations is completely broken, and we’ve got Lord Hermer and his friends to thank for that.
“And then there is no transformation plan, as Al Carns, who, by the way, good on him for stepping down in this way, and good on the Defence Secretary for stepping down in this way, has said you’ve got the ability with a few drones to destroy a billion dollars worth of equipment, and no one’s talking about transformation.
“So, Al Carns, his message is right on all the big points, not enough money, no transformation, and no legal basis. And Starmer, what’s he doing? Ignoring that, and he’s ignoring the voices of his political appointees, who have struggled from within the system to try and get the Treasury and Number 10 to pay attention, and they’ve said, ‘I’ve had enough’.
“I can only imagine what the service chiefs think, and I’m pretty sure the service chiefs stand with Healey and Carns and everybody who speaks security, common sense, which is not what the Prime Minister does.”
He was excoriating about the appointment of Dan Jarvis as the new Defence Secretary: “I think he’s being disloyal to defence and being loyal to his own career and his bosses. I think it’s likely to be an exceedingly shallow experience for everybody in defence with Dan Jarvis just wheeling out the Treasury line and everyone in defence rolling their eyes and hoping we get a government that takes defence seriously.
“Dan Jarvis is going to deliver absolutely nothing other than some words delivered in a new accent. What we have to see is change, and Dan Jarvis, unless he turns up with more money, binning the Northern Ireland bill, and focusing on real transformation is just going to be more of those who put lipstick on this increasingly fat and rotten defence pig.”
He added: “Thank you for giving people like me the opportunity to be candid. This is not a time to dress things up, you’ve got the people who were charged with the defence of this country, the political appointees who are in the government saying this country is not being defended.
“The subs aren’t at the sea, we can’t put the navy in the Med, we don’t have a vehicle programme or a drone programme that makes sense for future warfare, when, by the way, our veterans are just sitting on conveyor belts of legal process, which is totally unnecessary and underwritten by human rights law. We all have to speak up at this point and go, ‘What the hell is going on?'”
