Trump has it right about wokeness in the Army, and we should listen.

Donald Trump’s clarity of message and anti-woke agenda have played a large part in securing the US Army record enlistment numbers since November, when he was elected president.

Having failed to meet recruitment targets previously despite many initiatives last year, the US Army experienced a boon of 350 enlistments a day in December alone, and the numbers are still strong enough to insure it meets this year’s goals.

Contrast this to the British Army, which only achieved 63% of its recruitment target last year and is haemorrhaging 300 soldiers every month, as highly trained and talented professionals – including NCOs, the Army’s backbone -opt for civvy street.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth took to social media to declare: “America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong “America First” leadership of President .”

He may be right.

Labour is doing much to address some of the grievances. Under defence secretary John Healey troops have been offered a 6% pay rise, while the MOD spent £6bn to require 40,000 leased and neglected military homes to address the systemic problem of poor hosing conditions for too who serve and their families.

This week it was announces that Army cyber troops would be fast tracked £40K salaries.

But other crucial factors are at play, too.

One is the sense that the British Army as a whole is no longer a “growth” industry.

The prospect of a career for life has been badly dented by the sad reality ​of cut after cut hav​ing shrunk the British Army’s numbers to their smallest since the Napoleonic wars.

Added to this is the effect on morale that an overabundance of training missions in the years after Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of “proper fighting”, has brought.

This may seem surprising given Nato’s high readiness following two years of war in .

Yet even this, alas, has not resulted in any form of reversal.

If, despite an impending war with , the powers-that-be show that the Armed Forces are only as important as political decisions by the Treasury allow, then why should Generation Z give up the comforts of home to enlist? What’s the point?

The US Army’s turnaround has been largely put down to President Trump’s clear messaging on issues like Diversity and Inclusion, and his disregard for international legal frameworks which could hamper military effectiveness.

Last month SAS hero George Simms DCM warned that the soldiers were becoming fearful that ECHR rules were making troops fear of persecution over combat kills , and that this was affecting morale.

The is reason to be worried: we have seen how veterans can find themselves hounded in retirement over actions on operations which had been cleared by numerous enquiries in the past, but which rematerialise owing to a shift in the political climate or opportunism by less than scrupulous lawyers.

But, crucially, Trump pledged to “get wokenes the hell out of the military”.

This comes from a belief that identity politics chips away at esprit de corps by dividing military personnel, instead of giving them a sense of unity.

Hegseth has established a task force and initiated a raft of measures to achieve this, beginnng with instructions that the Pentagon not celebrate Black History month.

West Point, the US Army’s elite training establishment, has now banned a raft of societies including the Vietnamese – American Cadet Association, the Society of Women Engineers, and Spectrum, an LGBTQ+ support group.

Arguably, the British Army faces a bigger challenge that its larger US counterpart, in having to draw from a smaller pool containing Generation Z applicants who, if they view British values with pride to begin with, demand – according to one MoD memo – double beds, en suite bathrooms and Wi-FI.

A few years ago Coi Langley Sharp, author of ‘Habit of Excellence – Why British Army Leadership Works’ told me: “Younger generations demand and expect more. They tend to be better educated, ask more questions and want to understand why. So our approach has changed.”

Prejudice, bullying and sexual assault are never excusable, and it’s right that personnel should feel safe and protected from these.

It is also true that the increased need to recruit from the Commonwealth has been used, righty or wrongly, to justify many DEI policies.

But many feel the pendulum has swung too far.

The RAF, of course, came unstuck after it was discovered that it had been actively discriminating against white applicants.

While the excesses of the DEI agenda – remember the recruitment poster telling “me me me millennials” to join – were already being warned about in 2020, the legacy has lingered.

The British Army has no set DEI targets, but soldiers are instructed to be conscious of issues like “race/identity, power and privilege”, check themselves for “micro-aggressions/micro-inequalities (day-to-day exchanges that transmit a sense of subordination)”, be wary of asking someone “where they are really from’” and misusing someone’s pronoun by referring to someone as a ‘he’ or ‘she’.

There are those iin Whitehall who even sought to challenge the motto “be the best” for fear that it could be seen as elitist and out some applicants off.

Such timidity is based on the mistaken beiief that every person is a potential recruit – when they simply aren’t. it woud surely be much better to focus on those who are.

And these might well observe that identity politics is already a fact of life in the British Army – soldiers are bound together by their unit, their regiment, and their job.

Why isn’t this enough?

has succeeded because, in his inimitable way, he made troops a clear offer: put Team America first and I will have your back.

Soldiers here yearn for this kind of clarity: not just from their commanding officers, or the Secretary of Defence, but from the highest level of leadership.

And they yearn for a relevancy which, for now at least, seems elusive.

They deserve both.