Latest news with #CaptainMainwaring
Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Don't panic! This fearsome military column is in your corner
The Ministry of Defence has said it plans to respond to the fraught global situation by re-establishing a 'home guard' for the first time since the 1940s. According to The Sunday Times, the force will be made up, now as then, of volunteers 'drawn from the civilian population… either too old or too young to fight'. And that means me. At first, I blenched at the thought of Britain being in a 'prewar era', but when I read that volunteers will form 'local hubs', I gave an audible 'huzzah!' of excitement, as I remembered what immense fun was had by Walmington-on-Sea platoon in Dad's Army. I would, of course, be a member of Times Comment platoon. Though not its Captain Mainwaring. For that,
Spectator
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Starmer's defence review seems anything but strategic
Fans of the classic British sitcom will feel a warm glow, as details of the forthcoming strategic defence review (SDR) were revealed this weekend. It leads with a proposal for a 'home guard' of civilian volunteers to protect the UK's critical national infrastructure of power plants, airports, telecommunications networks and subsea connectors. Predictably, this cued up references to Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring and the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) raised in the dark days of 1940. The SDR, commissioned within weeks of the government taking office last July, has been drafted by a team led by former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, assisted by General Sir Richard Barrons, ex-head of Joint Forces Command, and County Durham-born Dr Fiona Hill, previously director for Europe and Russia at the US National Security Council. There has been an alarming number of iterations, with a fourth draft presented to ministers in February, but publication is finally believed to be imminent. Although the SDR 'focuses heavily on homeland security, national resilience and the need for the public to realise that Britain has entered a pre-war era', focusing on the 'home guard' proposal seems a peculiar distortion.
