In The Conservative Woman, Julian Mann asks Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch if Britain’s immigration policies have imported enough “combat-trained Islamist” to outnumber the ever-decreasing number of soldiers in the British army:
You won’t find anyone less military-minded than me but Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s speech to the London Defence Conference last week prompted me to put these questions to her on X:
“How many combat-trained Islamists do you estimate there to be in Britain? Would they now outnumber the British Army and, if so, by how many?”
I very much doubt that I will get an answer. She is a busy woman and she might be reluctant to comment for fear of being drawn into an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory. She should note that the question is about Islamists, not about integrated and peaceable British Muslims.
It was this part of her speech, highlighted by historian Niall Ferguson on X, that provoked the questions:
General Sir Richard Barrons, co-author of the Government’s Strategic Defence Review, stripped away the pretence when he said: “Today’s army, frankly, could do one very small thing. It could seize a small market town on a good day”.
Ms Badenoch also said: “Between 1989 and 2022, defence spending fell in every year. One of the authors of the Strategic Defence Review has since said: ‘The UK is trapped in a conspiracy of stupidity because politicians won’t make the case for cutting spending to fund defence’. And he’s not the only one who thinks that. In Washington, US administrations have felt for years that, while America subsidised the defence of Europe, we built welfare systems instead. On this point, they are right. Before the Second World War, one in every £7 the British government spent went on health and welfare. By last year, it had soared to one in every £3. We have grown fat on welfare, prioritising benefits over bullets.”
According to the House of Lords Library: “As at 1 April 2025, there were 181,890 people in the UK armed forces, a 1 per cent decrease compared with the previous year. This total includes:
- all full-time service personnel (known as the UK regular forces) and Gurkhas, who comprise 77.7 per cent of the total number of personnel
- volunteer reserves (17.5 per cent of the total personnel)
- other personnel, including the serving regular reserve, sponsored reserve and military provost guard service (4.8 per cent of the total personnel)
“The total size of the full-time UK armed forces, comprising the UK regular forces, Gurkhas and full-time reserve service, was around 147,000. Of these, 82,000 were Army personnel, 33,000 were members of the Royal Navy or Royal Marines, and 32,000 belonged to the Royal Air Force.”
So if there were 100,000 combat-trained Islamists in Britain, they would outnumber the British Army by about 20,000. I realise that there are various levels of combat training. It is possible that British Army personnel are better trained than any Islamist forces they might face on British soil. But would they be better motivated, given the way they are being treated by the Government? Why has the Government apparently failed to reckon with the appalling impact on morale and recruitment from the lawfare it is allowing against special forces and Northern Ireland veterans?
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[…] GIVE THANKS FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Do “combat-trained Islamists in Britain … now outnumber the British Army”? […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » GIVE THANKS FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT: Do “combat-trained Islamists in Britain … now outnumber — April 16, 2026 @ 02:27
It’s worse than that. Your 100k Islamists are motivated street fighters. the 82k regular strength of the army is everything: logistics, signals, medics etc. We are now down to 32 regular infantry battalions = 19k at full strength.
There are some tough soldiers in the other combat arms (tanksters and artillery), but in terms of the people who are actually trained to fight house to house, it’s more like 100k Islamists vs at most 15k infantry.
On the plus side, Euripides is almost certainly correct: “Ten men [and they will be men], wisely led, will beat a hundred without a head”. The rescue of the WSO Colonel in Iran demonstrates this admirably and I’d like to think that the hotheads would leak away pretty quickly if the army was deployed and allowed to dish out a really proper drubbing.
Unfortunately, do you think the Army would be given the RoE to allow them to do that? Neither do I. We end up with a NI Troubles scenario on our own soil. Miserable.
Comment by The Pedant-General — April 16, 2026 @ 06:14
Not by the current government, or the Tories before them. They’d be more likely to order the army to support Muslim protests than to suppress them.
Comment by Nicholas — April 16, 2026 @ 11:36
“not about integrated and peaceable British Muslims”
There are no peaceful, integrated Muslims.
There are only Motivated, Homicidal Muslims, and Lazy, Go with the flow” Muslims. The GwtF Muslims are always ready to support, the other kind
Start Showing all of them the door.
Comment by Thomas — April 16, 2026 @ 11:24
Not only are the British forces outnumbered but demographically more of the Islamic immigrants are of military age. Further, their culture and society values unconventional warfare against non-Muslims whether military or civilian. For generations, the British culture has been taught to hate itself and value every other culture more than itself. I expect fairly quick submission led by British elites.
Comment by Subotai Bahadur — April 16, 2026 @ 13:46
I’d love to tell you you’re wrong on that … but I don’t think you are wrong. You’re certainly right about the “elites”, who have already decided that the Muslims are the future.
Comment by Nicholas — April 16, 2026 @ 15:09