Trump can teach UK about filling Army recruitment gaps, says former defence s…

Britain should follow Donald Trump’s example when it comes to filling gaps in Army recruitment, a former defence secretary said last night.

It follows revelations that the US Army has experienced record recruitment , with 350 people a day signing up to enlist since Trump was elected President in November.

By contrast, the British Army is still losing 300 soldiers a month and reached just 63% of its recruitment target last year.

The news was announced by US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who took to social media to declare: “Bottom line: America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong “America First” leadership of President Donald Trump.”

Despite measures such as expanding the Future Soldier Preparatory Course to potential recruits overcome academic and physical fitness barriers to service, the US Army had also been struggling ​with recruitment targets​, which it will now meet.

The turnaround has been put down to President Trump’s clear messaging on issues like diversity and inclusion and his disregard for international legal frameworks which could hamper military effectiveness.

Trump pledged to “get wokery the hell out of the military” and selected both his defence secretary, a former army veteran, and Air Force undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier -a former Space Force officer – for their anti-woke credentials.

Measures include eliminating diversity and inclusion groups within the military which are said to chip away at its esprit de corps by emphasising divisions.

In Britian, the Cabinet Office began phasing out unconscious bias training across Whitehall in 2020 after evidence emerged showing it was potentially counter-productive.

While the British Army has no set DEI targets, however, its Race Action Plan states that workshops should: “unearth and interrupt unconscious (and conscious) biases” and “raise awareness of and discuss the issues e.g. race/identity, power and privilege” .

In January last year an internal MoD blog warned personnel against committing microaggressions, such as “asking a person “where they are really from’ or misusing someone’s pronoun by referring to someone as a ‘he’ or ‘she’, and the Army’s Inclusive Behaviours guidance encourages personnel to introduce their pronouns.

Last month SAS hero George Simms DCM warned that the soldiers were becoming fearful that ECHR rules were making troops of persecution over combat kills , and that this was affecting morale.

Despite deliberate cuts which have made it the smallest since the Napoleonic wars, the British Army suffered a stark shortfall in recruitment last year, with just 6.720 enlistments, 63% of its 10,450 target. The Royal Navy yard even worse, achieving just 60% with 2,450 instead of the target of 4,040, while he RAF managed to recruit 1,800 – 70% of its 2,560 target.

Under defence secretary John Healey, Labour has gone a long way to address this with a 6% pay hike and the re-purchasing of 40,000 previously leased military homes in a £6bn deal in order to upgrade accommodation standards.

But fundamental issues remaining pay and accommodation, said former defence secretary Gavin Williamson.

“People also want to know that they’re joining a growing service, something that is going to be expanding and something that isn’t. going to be messing around with things that seem to be not relevant to its core purpose,” he said last night.

“When I was defence secretary the Army wanted to drop the phrase ‘be the best’ because they feared it would put people off.

“We intervened and made sure that that didn’t happen, but things like this have a negative affect.”

He said the UK could learn from from the US example under President Trump, adding: “The clarity that Trump has instilled is important. People want to know that if they’re joining the armed forces they’re there to defend the country and serve its interests, and take pride in that

“Sadly, this messaging has become messy. There’s a timidity because there’s a desire to reach everyone. The reality is there will always be those who just arrest interested.”