Reservists aged 65? Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Starmer?
BRUCE NEWSOME
THE government is planning to raise the age limit for reserve forces from 55 to 65. Former armed forces personnel will also remain on call for an extra decade, to 65.
Unfortunately bureaucrats have lost touch with many members of the strategic reserve, so they are not sure of numbers or where they are. Some won’t be found, some won’t opt in. Reprocessing these personnel will be very difficult, for little gain in combat power.
So why bother?
The government says they will help Britain during war.
War? Not as combatants, they won’t.
How would 65-year-olds be utilised?
The government hasn’t specified, except to say that some would be needed in specialist, non-combat roles, such as cybersecurity, though I can’t imagine the number qualified in cybersecurity would add up to much.
The real reason?
Exaggerating the strength of UK armed forces.
As I have reported in TCW already, these forces are declining in quantity and quality, due to woke recruiting, out-sourcing, bad management, DEI, foreign bias and lawfare.
The count of all armed personnel (active and reserve) this fiscal year is fewer than 182,000, of whom 147,000 are officially employed full-time. If the strategic reserve contains the rumoured 95,000 men and women, keeping them on the books longer enables the government to claim a 50 per cent larger strength.
However I doubt that most of the reservists would be discoverable or useful. Even when current active personnel age into the 55-65 group, most won’t be useful. Most active armed personnel today are not ready for deployment.
The government needs to improve voluntary recruitment and retention rather than oblige its current, already-unhappy personnel to serve longer.
Overall, UK armed forces were 8,590 personnel (6 per cent) below target strength at the start of this fiscal year.
The Navy has failed to meet recruitment goals each year since 2010. In recent years, it has fallen short of target by 40 per cent. The Navy employed 33,000 sailors and Marines, as of April last year, a shortfall of 8 per cent.
The RAF is short of pilots, and is employing Indians to train them. It held 32,000 personnel as of April last year, a shortfall of 13 per cent.
Since 1975, the Army has more than halved. It is at its smallestsize since the Napoleonic Wars. It counted fewer than 71,000 soldiers in June 2025, a shortfall of 2,000. The government’s ambition is to budget only a few thousand more (probably to 76,000).
Most soldiers are not readyfor deployment as combatants. A recent book estimates that the Army ‘might be able to generate a single division of about 30,000 troops for a one-off intervention’.
Wokeness is driving all this.
First, advertising went woke since the 2000s. In one advert released in 2018, a patrol stops for a Muslim soldier to pray. This is unnecessary (the Koran allows for religious obligations to be suspended during military operations) and inefficient and dangerous (illustrated by the other soldiers sitting around, exposed and unready).
Second, the forces outsourced most recruiting and training to contractors. For instance, the Army passed recruiting to Capita in 2012. Ten years later, Parliament found that Capita’s performance was ‘abysmal’ while the Army’s management was weak.
Third, contractors and civil servants are pathetically slow at processing applications. In the ten years from 2014 through 2023, three-quarters of applicants, more than 827,000, withdrew, most of them while waiting. The Army admitted an average wait of 5.3 months between application and training (plenty of time to find another job or get hooked on welfare).
Fourth, the government has recruited more foreigners. This approach has the attractions of slowing wage inflation and increasing ‘diversity’, but foreigners tend to be less motivated and skilled. Around 12,000 foreigners are serving in the Armed Forces today, about one in 12 across the services, or one in ten in the Army.
Since 2009, the Ministry of Defence sets a cap of 15 per cent for the proportion of foreigners per unit, but in London Central Garrison the proportion is 35 per cent. Of the foreigners, some 40 per cent do not speak enough English to be employable in support of the police in an emergency, such as a terrorist attack.
Fifth, DEI is driving good personnel to leave. Ethnic minorities and women appear to be treated with kid gloveswhen they fail standards for physical or professional competence. Military personnel are bombarded with emails warning against gendered language and unconscious biases. Regiments are encouraged to give up symbols and traditions that might be offensive, such as a canine mascot or a battle honour earned against Muslim enemies.
By 2020, the MoD employed 44 DEI officers (the Whitehall average is 20 per department, across nine departments). Each DEI officer is paid at least £70,000 and some get £180,000! DEI officers don’t have a problem retaining themselves.
Sixth, armed personnel are increasingly exposed to civil and criminal lawfare – for violating the human right to life, even if they obey rules of engagement. Northern Ireland’s terrorists were promised immunity in the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998. British personnel were not. And now the government wants to legislate to reinvestigate British personnel for actions going back decades.
On Armistice Day, nine four-star generals signed an open letter ‘to warn that the government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, and the legal activism surrounding it, risk weakening the moral foundations and operational effectiveness of the forces on which this nation depends’.
A woker, riskier military is making the best of soldiers quit. By 2025, about 300 more soldiers were leaving than joining each month – a brigade’s worth each year. Naturally, quitters over-represent those with capacity for civilian work, which means that the military tends to inferior quality as well as inferior quantity.
Counting reservists up to the age of 65 won’t solve the recruitment and retention of young Britons.
To solve the recruitment and retention crises in UK armed forces, the British government needs to give up wokeness, outsourcing, glacial work-rate, foreign recruiting, DEI and lawfare.
This article (Reservists aged 65? Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Starmer?) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Bruce Newsome
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