Who Has the Soldier’s Back — Westminster or Strasbourg?

In the latest One More Mission podacast, Former Parachute Regiment Lt Col Simon Barry talks about why that question now matters for Northern Ireland veterans, and for any troops sent to Ukraine.

As ministers talk tough abroad, confidence is quietly draining at home. In the latest episode of the One More Mission podcast, former Parachute Regiment Lieutenant Colonel Simon Barry pulls together three threads the Government would rather keep separate: Kemi Badenoch’s challenge at PMQs, the growing alarm of the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, and what all this means for soldiers now being asked to deploy to Ukraine.

The Government insists this is about “process”, “balance”, and “compliance”. Simon Barry isn’t buying it — and neither, increasingly, are serving soldiers and veterans.

This episode starts with Kemi Badenoch’s pointed intervention at Prime Minister’s Questions, where she asked a question many in uniform have been asking privately for some time: how can the Government claim to “have our backs” while reopening the legal machinery that has hounded veterans for decades?

Barry is clear: the significance of that exchange wasn’t party politics, but that the issue has finally been forced into the open. When senior figures warn that the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill risks “wrecking” special forces capability, and retired four-star generals call it a national security threat, this is no fringe complaint. It goes to the heart of trust between the state and those it sends into harm’s way.

The discussion then turns to David Johnstone, the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, whose recent remarks — that veterans are now being treated worse than terrorists — did not come lightly. Barry speaks with evident respect for Johnstone's efforts to work constructively with government, and with equal frustration that those efforts appear to have been brushed aside. The problem, Barry argues, is simple and brutal: any “compromise” acceptable to Sinn Féin and the Republic of Ireland will, by definition, be paid for by veterans.

Matters become more unsettling when this legacy issue is placed alongside the prospect of British troops deploying to Ukraine.

Barry, a former intelligence planner, returns to first principles: desired end state, exit strategy, legal clarity, and morale. On all four, he argues, the Government is failing. Asking soldiers to operate under extraterritorial legal uncertainty — while pointing to Strasbourg rather than Westminster for protection — is not just morally questionable, but operationally dangerous. Adversaries exploit doubt. They always have.

The Russians, Barry notes, understand deception and psychological pressure instinctively. If British soldiers believe their own government will disown them after the fact, that doubt becomes a vulnerability — one that no amount of ministerial reassurance can patch over.

This One More Mission episode does not offer easy answers or neat resolutions. It does, however, cut through the fog. The question facing ministers is no longer whether this looks bad politically, but whether they are prepared to do the one thing soldiers are always expected to do: act correctly, even when it is uncomfortable.

You can listen to the full episode of One More Mission now.

To keep up with the facts around lawfare against those who did their duty and are now paying the price, visit justiceforveterans.uk.