Is it political to support Black Lives Matter? Not according to No. 10’s most senior security adviser. Stephen Lovegrove (he/him) was until March this year the top civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, before being promoted to national security adviser in Downing Street. During an MoD staff call in June last year, Lovegrove stated supporting BLM is:
‘Not a political position whatsoever. It’s not a gesture of support for any particular organisation. It is about the general principle of recognising that, at the moment, there is a problem that we, as a society, need to fix.’
Now, Mr S isn’t sure about this one. Perhaps Lovegrove hasn’t seen the official BLM UK Twitter account that calls for open borders (no need to defend our borders if we’re not enforcing them, eh Sir Stephen?). Or maybe he hasn’t seen the £1.2 million BLM crowd-funder that states that the movement is ‘guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, [and] patriarchy’. It isn’t too much of a stretch to assume they might be against that vile force of western imperialism: the British military. Mr S wants to know why Lovegrove couldn’t just say he was against racism — like all sane people — and leave it at that?
All this would be rather amusing if progressive moralism wasn’t a danger to Britain’s defence capabilities. Over the weekend, the Telegraph revealed that the MoD is having trouble maintaining the UK’s nuclear stockpile because so-called ‘ethical investors’ are blocking companies from working on the UK’s atomic defence infrastructure. City hedge funds are apparently refusing to allow contractors to work in defence because it breaches their so-called ‘environment, social and governance standards’.
And it isn’t just the missiles. Sir Stephen’s tenure as MoD permanent secretary oversaw major failings in the UK’s Trident submarine system. Last year it was revealed that two of the four subs were out of action for more than a year because of difficulties in repairing equipment. Needless to say, Trident can’t work as a deterrent if our missiles don’t work and our subs are stuck in port.
Perhaps Sir Stephen should have spent a little less time pandering to the anti-capitalist BLM movement and a little more time focusing on, you know, defence of the realm.
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