Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever (Ps 41:12)
Ministers treat the Army as the answer to a general strike. Its record says otherwise: a week to reach a forecourt, drivers barred from jumping red lights, and a Defence Chief refusing to play spare labour. Britain runs on moving goods, and no statute can order them to move.
Whitehall waves 146,000 police officers and 70,000 soldiers about like proof of strength. Only a sliver of either can be sent anywhere in a hurry. Leviathan governs on borrowed obedience, and nobody in charge has asked how many of its hidden props could fail at once.
Britain spends over £200bn a year on socialism and earns pocket money from it. Meanwhile Irish patients queue, Canadians flee, Gulf ministries pay cash, and Nigeria's elite fly to London. Every one of them is a customer the NHS is too proud, or too disorganised, to bill.
Folded into one department in the name of efficiency, the state's lawyers became gatekeepers to every ministerial ambition. From Channel pushbacks to Chagos and Iran, their caution has cost Britain dearly, and a Labour Attorney General has now rewritten the rules to prove it.