Lord Bramall’s last stand

Retreat to your bunkers. Repeat: this is not a drill. Field Marshal Lord Bramall, former chief of the defence staff and veteran of the Normandy landings, has delivered a parting shot. Last week, as he stood from the House of Lords, he opened fire from the crossbenches, blasting the government’s plans to replace Trident and calling for a ‘better-balanced, more relevant defence programme’ in which nuclear weapons would play little or no part. The campaign continues next week, when Bramall will be ‘taking questions’ at the Travellers Club in Piccadilly.

This is not the first time he has made known his views that Britain should phase out its nuclear weaponry. But with the new fleet due in 2016 the tension is ratcheting. At 89, Bramall is one of our highest-ranking veterans, with an armoury of medals and a voice that could hold back the crowds at a Harrods sale. We ignore such men at our peril — so here I am, parachuting into his Hampshire home with a tape recorder. But softly goes, for I’ve been warned he takes few prisoners. He once thwacked his fellow peer, the 78-year-old Lord Janner, after a row over the Lebanon conflict. The man who strides out to greet me on the gravel — ramrod straight, ruddy-faced, and dressed in corduroy and brogues — looks as if he could settle any matter with his bare hands.

‘I believe nuclear weapons are absolutely useless,’ he begins, leading me into a gracious drawing room and honing straight to his target. ‘They did not stop 9/11, despite America having the biggest deterrent in the world, and they did not stop Saddam Hussein firing missiles into Israel. They don’t deter because as everyone knows, they cannot be used.’