Reflections on the week in defence

Stephen Lovegrove appointed to advise on the AUKUS agreement; Blair "Paddy" Mayne and the VC that wasn't; and NATO Supreme Commander warns of reducing US troop numbers in Europe

Living in a land down under

A relatively small story in Civil Service World which I didn’t see mentioned anywhere else contained an announcement that Sir Stephen Lovegrove, former National Security Adviser and Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, has been appointed the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on AUKUS. The official statement from Downing Street said that Lovegrove will “support the Defence Secretary and the National Security Adviser to drive the AUKUS programme forward” and, in his own words, “help maximise the potential of this vital partnership”.

Last August, Lovegrove was named as “the Government’s AUKUS Adviser” and charged with reviewing the alliance “to reinforce the progress and benefits of the AUKUS programme”, and to “establish UK progress against the original AUKUS ambition so far, identify any barriers to success, and how to unlock further areas of opportunity to maximise the potential of AUKUS”. There is a logical continuity to giving him responsibility for translating the results of his review into action, and Lovegrove will travel to Washington DC to brief the American administration on his conclusions; he will do the same with the Australian government after the federal elections in Australia next month. After several months trailing the opposition Liberal-National Coalition, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Australian Labor Party has eased slightly ahead in recent opinion polls, though the margins remain narrow.

It’s difficult to know prima facie what to make of Lovegrove’s new role and how much weight to attach to it. Prime ministerial “special representatives” are a largely unknown quantity in the British system of government, and are much more redolent of the presidential “special envoys” which often litter the corridors of power in Washington; President Biden appointed 44 such envoys, dealing with subjects ranging from Belarus through racial equity and justice to United States Government activities to combat HIV/AIDS globally.

Lord Collins of Highbury is the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, which he combines with a ministerial post at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, speaking for the government in equalities in the House of Lords and acting as Deputy Leader of the Lords and a Lord in Waiting (a government whip). David Smith, Labour MP for North Northumberland, is the UK’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, and Baroness Harman is Special Envoy for Women and Girls. Former UK Ambassador in Washington Dame Karen Pierce is Special Envoy to the Western Balkans, Professor Rachel Kyte is the UK Special Representative for Climate, Ruth Davis is Special Representative for Nature and Professor Dame Sally Davies is UK Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance. Lord Pickles will step down at the end of the month as UK Special Envoy on Post-Holocaust Issues.

There are some established diplomatic positions like Special Representative to Syria, currently Ann Snow, Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea, Alison Blackburne, Special Representative to Sudan, Richard Crowder, Special Envoy to the Sahel, Jonathan Croft, Special Envoy for Small Island Developing States, Rebecca Fabrizi, and Special Envoy for Gender Equality, Alicia Herbert. These are all held by members of the Diplomatic Service, in some cases in conjunction with complementary roles.

There are also no fewer than 35 MPs and peers serving as United Kingdom Trade Envoys, though these duties do not seem to be onerous.

Jonathan Powell, now National Security Adviser and for 10 years Downing Street Chief of Staff under Sir Tony Blair, acted as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for negotiations between the UK and Mauritius on the exercise of sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory from September to October last year, and had previously been Special Envoy to Libya from 2014 to 2016. From October to November 2024, Sue Gray, having stepped down as Downing Street Chief of Staff, held the title of Prime Minister’s Envoy to the Nations and Regions, but took some weeks’ leave and then did not take up the role, under circumstances which are unclear. She was not replaced as Envoy, which suggests it was not a substantive post but a consolation for leaving Downing Street, as was the peerage she was later given.

In opposition, David Lammy, then Shadow Foreign Secretary, promised to appoint a Special Envoy for Hostages; this has yet to happen, though Lammy is under pressure to fulfil his pledge and insists the idea has not been abandoned. There have also been calls for the Prime Minister to appoint a Special Envoy for Cryptocurrency.

As this demonstrates, the use of special representatives and special envoys is varied and can be haphazard. Some are very little more than courtesy titles, some are short-term personal appointments and some are full-time official roles. Where on that spectrum Lovegrove will fall is not yet clear; the language used to describe his duties, allowing for a degree of Starmerian blandness and aspiration, could mean a very light-touch supervisory or advice-giving task, or could sketch out much deeper involvement to develop AUKUS beyond its current boundaries.

Lovegrove’s career trajectory has been somewhat unusual and uneven. After graduating for Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he worked in media consultancy for four years before moving to Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (subsequently Deutsche Bank), eventually becoming head of the organisation’s European media team. In April 2004, he was appointed to the Shareholder Executive, a unit in the Department of Trade and Industry which managed the government’s financial interests in a range of state-owned entities pursuing commercial rather than political advantage. He became acting Chief Executive (June 2007 to April 2008) then Chief Executive from April 2008, and also sat on the board of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOGOC) and briefly acted as Chairman of British Nuclear Fuels.

In February 2013, he was appointed Permanent Secretary to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, a relatively rare outsider coming into the central departments of Whitehall as a permanent secretary. Three years later, he moved to replace Sir Jon Thompson as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. He served a more than respectable stint of five years at the MoD, under four Defence Secretaries. Lovegrove managed to avoid overseeing a full-scale defence review, leaving the same month that the Integrated Review, Global Britain in a Competitive Age, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, was published; the document had in any case been led from 10 Downing Street by a team under Professor John Bew, foreign policy adviser to four successive Prime Ministers (Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer).

In January 2021, Downing Street announced that Lovegrove would become the fifth National Security Adviser, taking office in March. He was the first occupant of the role not to have been in the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service, and was chosen when David (now Lord) Frost, who had been nominated the previous June, decided not to take up the post. As I explained in an essay in 2022, it was unclear what status Frost would occupy as National Security Adviser, neither minister nor official, and there were accusations that he was not nearly qualified for the post in terms of experience. If Lovegrove was second choice, Boris Johnson at least put a brave face on force majeure, praising his “wealth of experience from across Whitehall and in National Security” (which Frost had singularly lacked), and claiming to “look forward to working closely together to deliver this Government’s vision for the UK in the world”.

Johnson only lasted another 18 months as Prime Minister once Lovegrove became National Security Adviser in March 2021. He announced his resignation early in July after his government had slowly collapsed along with the confidence of the Conservative Party in Parliament and left Downing Street once a new leader was elected and kissed hands as Prime Minister. Lovegrove, however, was not far behind him; eight days into her premiership, Liz Truss removed him as National Security Adviser in favour of Sir Tim Barrow, a more traditional Foreign Office mandarin, and gave him the new, short-term and rather empty position of Defence Industrial Adviser to the Prime Minister. He left at the end of 2022.

Lovegrove is only 58, so in theory could throw himself into this new job with vigour and application. One complicating factor is that since January 2024 he has been Chair of Rolls-Royce SMR, the division of the defence and aerospace manufacturer which is designing a small modular reactor for civil nuclear energy generation. The new attack submarines which are part of the AUKUS agreement, the SSN-AUKUS class, will be powered by Rolls-Royce pressurised water reactors, which presents an obvious conflict of interest since Rolls-Royce Holdings owns 76 per cent of Rolls-Royce SMR.

The focus of Lovegrove’s role seems so far to have been framed in economic terms. He himself said of AUKUS:

It is a uniquely powerful partnership which will develop and deliver cutting-edge capabilities, help to revitalise Britain’s defence industrial base and provide sustained employment for thousands of people across the UK, US and Australia.

In the same vein, John Healey, the Defence Secretary, pledged that AUKUS would:

provide thousands of highly skilled jobs and investment in communities across the UK. It shows how defence can be an engine for growth across our three nations while keeping us secure at home, and strong abroad.

This is very much in line with Sir Keir Starmer’s ambition (desperate hope?) that the UK defence industry can provide some of the elusive economic growth which he stressed again and again in Opposition and on nurturing which almost every aspect of his premiership depends. The programme is predicted to create 7,000 new jobs in the UK, and ministers hope these will be spread around the country to provide prosperity in a number of regions.

Lovegrove has described AUKUS as Britain’s most significant defence collaboration since the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement of 1958, the treaty which enabled cooperation on nuclear weapons technology and led to the Royal Navy acquiring first Polaris and then Trident missiles as the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, as well as nuclear propulsion systems for its submarines. The Mutual Defence Agreement was amended and extended in 1959, 1968, 1969, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1994, 2004 and 2014, and last November the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to extend it indefinitely. AUKUS is expected to bring billions of pounds to the UK defence industry, though the government has already earmarked an investment of £4 billion to continue the detailed design work on the SSN-AUKUS class and order long-lead items, and another £3 billion across the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, including in the industrial infrastructure necessary to build the new submarines.

There are some challenges worth noting. The Royal Australian Navy’s current attack submarines, the six Collins-class boats, are reaching the end of their intended service lives. Australia intends to build and operate five SSN-AUKUS submarines, but these will not begin to enter service until the early 2040s, and each will take three years to build. In order to make good the capability gap, therefore, the Collins-class boats will receive a life-of-type extension (though it is rumoured this process may be scaled back) to maintain them in operation until the 2040s.

In addition, Australia will buy three Virginia-class attack submarines from the United States as soon as the early 2030s, with the option to purchase two more. The plan is for two Block IV Virginia-class submarines to be transferred from the US Navy’s six boats in service, with the third Australian boat to be a Block VII built specifically for the Royal Australian Navy. However, the congressional legislation which authorised the transfer and sale of the Virginia-class submarines, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, stipulates that the deal can only proceed if the United States’ own procurement needs are already met. Meanwhile, construction of the submarines is badly behind schedule, and if the US Navy needs to exercise its right to priority over newly constructed boats, it will leave the Royal Australian Navy with a major headache and no painless Plan B.

Sir Stephen Lovegrove’s appointment could be almost a sinecure, or it could prove to be a significant step in the UK trying to wring more advantage out of an existing international agreement. There are so many unanswered questions: how closely does the government’s language and ambition align with reality? How deeply has this been considered? How demanding will Lovegrove’s role be? What support will he receive from the Ministry of Defence? How long is it expected to last? How will it fit into the wider picture of the Strategic Defence Review and the anticipated Defence Industrial Strategy? It may, at least, be a space more worth watching than initially expected.

Who dares wins?

If you want to attract the attention of casual observers to matters military, special forces are one of the easiest methods available. In this, while American readers will think, with some justification, of the Green Berets, Navy SEALs and the Army Rangers, Britain has a near-untouchable brand in just three letters: SAS. The Special Air Service was born of inventiveness and improvisation in the North African desert in 1941, conceived originally as a commando force to operate in irregular warfare behind enemy lines and has become one of the most formidable special forces units in the world, trained and prepared for warfare in extreme conditions, reconnaissance, direct action, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue, among other roles.

(The unit was originally named L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade, a title designed to mislead German intelligence into thinking there was a parachute regiment with multiple sub-units operating in the area, even though its initial strength was just five officers and 60 NCOs and other ranks. In a very British way, the “Special Air Service” element of the name, specifically designed to describe something other than what the SAS was, has persisted for nearly 80 years and been exported to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and previously Rhodesia.)

Some of the most iconic images of the SAS in action come from the siege of the Iranian Embassy in London in April and May 1980, very nearly 45 years ago, about which Ben Macintyre recently wrote an excellent volume, The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama. (That said, if you really want tense drama which oozes machismo, I really do recommend 1982’s Who Dares Wins, closely modelled on the siege.) There has been a renewed surge in interest in the SAS thanks to the Kudos-produced BBC drama SAS: Rogue Heroes, written by Stephen Knight of Peaky Blinders fame (and one of the creators of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?). It tells the story of the genesis of the SAS, beginning with the maverick aristocratic Scots Guards officer David Stirling, played by Connor Swindells, a sense of whose character can be gleaned from the fact he was sent down from Trinity College, Cambridge, for 28 separate transgressions of which he was invited to choose the three which would be least offensive to his mother.

The series has been criticised for taking liberties with the historical record, which it undoubtedly does, but it has been popular with audiences and generally well received critically. It has also brought greater public attention to one of the other founding fathers of the SAS, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne. The portrayal of Mayne, by Jack O’Connell, has been criticised especially sharply as an enormous misrepresentation: Mayne was a difficult and sometimes rowdily boisterous man who had played rugby for the British and Irish Lions in the 1930s, but he was not the wild, uncontrollable thug or borderline-psychopath of increasingly popular legend. Nor, for that matter, was he a working-class hero fighting the entrenched class system of the British Army. He came from a landed family, was educated at a grammar school in Newtownards and Queen’s University, Belfast, and qualified as a solicitor just before the Second World War broke out in 1939. He was a Freemason and after the war served as Secretary of the Law Society of Northern Ireland.

If you want to know more about Mayne, the best book I can recommend is Hamish Ross’s biography, Paddy Mayne: Lt Col Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, 1 SAS Regiment. It is a solid and thorough treatment of an extraordinary man and outstanding soldier who never fully readjusted to civilian life, was in constant pain from a back injury and died in a car crash in 1955, aged only 40. Mayne was not only a brilliant soldier but brave beyond imagination, being awarded the Distinguished Service Order in February 1942 and no fewer than three bars to it over the following three years. But herein lies the tale: there has long been a belief that his third bar should in fact have been a Victoria Cross, and that he was, for one reason or another, unfairly denied the country’s most senior gallantry award.

I bring all of this up because on Tuesday, as the House of Commons prepared to adjourn for Easter, Jim Shannon, the Democratic Unionist Party MP for Strangford, was given time to lead a debate on “the potential merits of awarding a posthumous Victoria Cross to Blair Mayne”. Shannon has represented the Strangford constituency, which includes Mayne’s birthplace (and place of death) of Newtownards, since 2010; he is a straightforward, courteous and dedicated local MP, recently turned 70, who is respected across the House for his diligence and the sheer hours he puts in to his duties as a Member.

I won’t rehearse the arguments made in the debate, because you can read it for yourself—it only lasted 75 minutes—but I raise it just to make a couple of small observations. The first is that I do not question for a moment Mayne’s exceptional heroism, courage and leadership, nor the crucial role he played both in the individual engagements mentioned in the debate, and in the development of the SAS overall. I have profound respect and affection for Northern Ireland and the people of Northern Ireland, and I found Shannon’s almost starstruck tales of boyhood ambition very touching.

Secondly, as a matter of principle, I don’t generally agree with revisiting old circumstances and altering the award of medals or honours, or the verdicts of trials, or any other matters of record. Too often it is an attempt to impose our contemporary standards on to the past, which is both foolish and often extremely damaging and misleading. Taking the matter more widely, I strongly opposed the idea underlying the Witchcraft Convictions (Pardons) (Scotland) Bill introduced in the Scottish Parliament by Natalie Don of the SNP in 2022, because it was seeking to apply the beliefs, mores and morality of the 2020s to events of the 16th century for no reasonable purpose.

So the idea of trying to “right” the supposed “wrong” of Blair Mayne being denied the Victoria Cross, 80 years after the events for which it would have been awarded, does not attract me. If Mayne himself felt cheated, that is a great sadness, because he was a great man, though the remark Shannon reported him making to King George VI on the matter—“I served to my best my Lord, my King and my Queen, and none can take that honour away from me”—I thought enormously moving. But, as Mayne must have known as well as anyone, life is often unfair and not everyone is rewarded as they should be. On those grounds, I don’t think awarding him a posthumous Victoria Cross would have been right or serve any purpose.

I have only one caveat. I don’t know how accurate Shannon’s thesis was, but the proposition he put forward, that Mayne’s citation for a VC was downgraded to a third bar to his DSO because someone misread the requirements for the higher award as requiring not a “signal act of valour” but a “single act of valour”, that is, one achieved single-handed, did make me stop and think. If that is the reason the award was modified, and there were no other factors, then I would be in favour of the retrospective award of a Victoria Cross, because the intent to award one to Mayne would have been there and was stopped only by a misunderstanding, not an intentional decision. It is a narrow circumstance but I find it a persuasive exception. Whether Jim Shannon is accurate in his assessment of the evidence and the circumstances is another matter, but I am glad Mayne’s case is at least going to be reviewed by the Honours and Awards Committee. I think all concerned should await the committee’s verdict but almost certainly regard it as the last word on the subject.

(P.S. I have the utmost esteem and respect for the men of the SAS and of UK Special Forces in general, but I always remember the exchange from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, in which Hugh is applying to join the SAS and Stephen asks him if he’s “aware of what the SAS is all about”. When Hugh says no, Stephen explains “Well originally, the SAS was formed as an elite, crack, secret, crack secret assault force, to work behind enemy lines during the war… of course our role has changed somewhat since then. Nowadays our duties are to act primarily as a masturbatory aid for Lewis Collins and various back-bench MPs.” It was still (just) the 80s, after all.)

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Briefly: Politico carried a story earlier this week which included details of a hearing of the United States House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on “US Military Posture and National Security Challenges in Europe”. One of the witnesses was General Christopher G. Cavoli, Commander of United States European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). During his testimony, Cavoli argued against reducing American troop numbers deployed in Europe, in sharp contrast with the messages coming clearly from the White House, from Vice-President J.D. Vance and from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that the United States is switching its focus to the Indo-Pacific and expects European nations to bear much more of the burden of the continent’s security henceforth.

SACEUR was not entertaining that notion. He told the Committee that he had “consistently recommended” maintaining force levels at their current strength since taking up his dual-hatted posts a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and was absolutely explicit: “It’s my advice to maintain that force posture as it is now”. He had told a Senate committee last week that it would be “problematic” if the United States abdicated its current leadership role in Europe.

As I set out in the last set of reflections, President Trump’s purge of senior military staff whom he dislikes—including, so far, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the US Coast Guard and the Director of the National Security Agency—shows that no amount of gold braid and no number of stars on your epaulettes will ensure your position absolutely, so Cavoli must know he is taking a risk by seeming to contradict the administration’s policies so publicly. Neither Trump nor Hegseth have any regard for the impartiality of the armed forces or the value of honest, unvarnished advice.

It may be worth observing, in that connection, that General Cavoli will turn 61 later this year and has already been SACEUR for almost three years; only two of his seven predecessors this century have served significantly beyond the three-year mark, and no-one has served more than four years since 1992. Cavoli is in fact expected to retire some time later this year, and a number of possible restructuring options after his departure have been mooted: merging US European Command and US Africa Command; decoupling the posts of SACEUR and CDRUSEUCOM; no longer supplying a four-star general or admiral to be SACEUR; or combining United States Northern Command and United States Southern Command into a single AMERICOM command for North and South America. None is finding much favour outside Trump’s and Hegseth’s immediate circles.

It will be interesting (and perhaps revealing) to see if Trump is willing to overlook this kind of open difference of opinion from one of his most senior military commanders. A rational person would barely give it a second thought: Trump is the President and Commander-in-Chief, with an electoral term which lasts until January 2029, while Cavoli is likely in his last months as a serving officer. We know, however, that Trump is not a rational person, that he is thin-skinned, prickly and suspicious. So, as with every moment of his presidency, don’t look away: you might miss something.