Alistair Carns’s decision to leave the Royal Marines after 24 years’ service to stand for Labour in the coming election came as a huge surprise. The colonel, who won the Military Cross in Afghanistan, was widely viewed as someone who would rise very high in the armed forces.
Standing in Birmingham Selly Oak, he is one of 14 former services personnel to stand as prospective Labour candidates in this election, something that does no harm to Keir Starmer’s attempts to portray his party as one that can be trusted with the defence of the realm.
Carns, who joined the Royal Marines at 19, was due to be promoted to brigadier this month, which at the age of 44 would have made him among the youngest in that rank. He has served in every major conflict this country has been engaged in for the last two dozen years.
Much of Carns’s service history – 14 of his 24 years – cannot be made public for security reasons. He won his Military Cross during a six-month tour that began at the end of 2010. Those of us who reported from Afghanistan remember the fierce, sustained violence of this period as the Taliban made increasing use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and lethal ambushes.
But it was during his last posting in a conflict zone that Carns began to think hard about how he could best address the challenges Britain faces in an increasingly dangerous world. The answer, he decided, was to enter politics.
“We are seeing a completely different form of warfare. We are seeing, for example, the use of hundreds, thousands of drones, drones destroying battle fleets. How many drones have we got in the army? How many drones are in the navy? What lessons are we learning? Are we moving fast enough to keep up with the character of conflict, and if we go to war tomorrow, are we ready?” Carns says.
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