If you were unlucky enough to witness Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston give evidence to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee this week, then like me, you were probably dismayed at the truly woeful performance by our Chief of Air Staff.
Red-faced and unable to hold the eye of any panel members, Sir Mike gave a performance that is likely to be disappointing to any member of the Royal Air Force (RAF) that serves underneath him. The Chief of Air Staff (CAS) was grilled on several recent issues to trouble the RAF, from claims of illegal positive discrimination, the poor performance of the MFTS contact, and unacceptable behavior by members of the Red Arrows.
On MFTS, CAS stumbled over the numbers on more than one occasion and suffered the indignity of being ‘pulled up’ by Mark Francois MP, calling into question his integrity and implying he was lying to the committee. Sadly, nobody in the room was left feeling content that the problem was resolved or that CAS had completed the one task the Secretary of State for Defence had given him and was perhaps lacking sufficient data to push CAS further on the issue – a consequence of his continual manipulation of statistics to provide a smoke-and-mirror response to the repeated questioning on the matter.
Perhaps the most awkward part of the proceedings was the sobering moment Chair of the committee, Tobias Ellwood MP, setting the scene on the issue of alleged ‘positive discrimination’ which led to the resignation of Group Captain Lizzie Nicholl, who refused to follow orders she believed to be illegal. The most pertinent part of the Chair’s summary was the simple question, “did the wrong person resign?” Seemingly unprepared for such an obvious question, CAS stumbled through a sickeningly politically correct and uncontrite response, on several occasions deliberately evading the committee’s direct questioning on the issue. So remorseful over the whole episode was CAS that he couldn’t even bring himself to acknowledge the name of the Group Captain that felt forced to resign.
I have an element of sympathy for CAS; he is the current head of a military force that has been in decline for several years, far from entirely under his watch. Furthermore, he was giving evidence to a panel made up of members such as John Spellar MP, the former Labour Minister of State for the Armed Forces, who, along with his long-standing colleagues on the committee, has presided over many a scandal, not least of all the many injustices surrounding the Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash. Notwithstanding this, I can’t help but feel that CAS is his own worst enemy, who could benefit from honestly and directly answering the odd question or two rather than trying to dither and bluster his way around a non-answer. It was apparent that Air Marshal Sir Rich Knighton, who accompanied CAS to the committee, felt this was a more appropriate response with his forceful refusal to provide clearly classified answers to the questions posed by Kevan Jones MP around the disposal of C130J Hercules aircraft.
The saddest thing about the numerous scandals that have recently besieged the RAF (and broader armed forces) is that it detracts from the great work that the vast majority of the UK’s military personnel on the front line, who are having to deal with poor performance from their senior leaders repeatedly, are carrying out. While I’m sure many members of the public and indeed serving members of the armed forces believe in the importance of diversity and inclusion, the reality is that if we want the best armed forces that our country can buy, then by far the more important thing is that we not only choose the best of the best without bowing down to quotas but our troops are given livable conditions and not quarters that wouldn’t be deemed fit by the ‘left’ as suitable for an asylum seeker and pay and conditions that recognise the contribution they provide society – it won’t be lost on many that members of our armed forces were ordered and expected to provide cover unquestionably to civil servants on greater pay than them during recent strikes.