Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence Or: How Britain Learned to Perform Power Instead of Exercise It

Let’s start by naming the thing properly. Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence. Based at the MOD Main Building, Whitehall, London. Advertised, with a straight face, on LinkedIn.

Twenty-eight people have already clicked “apply”. At the point of writing this article.

Now pause for half a second and ask the only sensible question.

Should I apply?

The answer, reached in under two seconds by anyone with a sprinkling of common sense, is NO WAY..!!

And neither should you.

Because everyone involved already knows who is getting the job.

The advert is not recruitment. It is ritual.

The LinkedIn State

In any serious country, a role like Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence is not floated into the digital ether like a middle-management vacancy. It is quietly filled by someone already known, trusted, and embedded. There are conversations, not adverts. Signals, not slogans.

But modern Britain no longer trusts itself unless a process has been performed.

Posting the role publicly allows the organisation to say:

• it was transparent,

• it was inclusive,

• it followed procedure,

• and all the boxes were ticked.

Whether the advert actually serves a purpose is beside the point. The performance is the point.

This is how authority is now laundered, through language.

Defence, Intelligence, and the HR Dialect

There is something faintly absurd about advertising one of the most sensitive intelligence posts in the country on the same platform people use to hunt for “culture leads” and “engagement partners”.

Intelligence does not work like that. It never has.

But the British state now speaks in a managerial dialect, even when dealing with defence. Everything must be narrated, values-aligned, and rendered safe for the process gods.

Quiet competence has been replaced by visible compliance.

Labour: Trapped in Its Own Wording

This is where Labour Party comes in.

Labour is not stupid. Plenty of Labour MPs know this has gone too far. They know the language has drifted away from reality. They know voters are bored rigid by it.

But Labour is trapped.

Its internal culture treats language as a moral test. Question the frameworks and you are “problematic”. Question EDI orthodoxy and you invite internal grief. So Labour manages the system instead of challenging it.

It governs in a dialect it no longer believes in, because stepping outside it carries personal risk.

The Conservatives: Cowardice, Institutionalised

And then there are the Conservatives.

Conservative Party have spent years talking about common sense while quietly signing off every framework, guideline, toolkit, and compliance regime that crossed their desks.

They complain about “woke excess” in speeches, then govern exactly as if they believe in it. They promise to cut nonsense, then expand it. They outsourced moral authority to the bureaucracy years ago and now they’re frightened of their own shadow.

This is not strategy. It is cowardice.

And Then There Are the Greens

Now let’s stop pretending we don’t all know what we’re talking about.

Inside the Green Party of England and Wales, the wheels haven’t just come off, they’ve been ceremonially replaced with fairy wings.

This is the party that has spent years tearing itself apart over pronouns, not ordinary ones, but invented ones. Fairy pronouns. Neo-pronouns. Language so abstract that most people only encounter it via screenshots shared in disbelief.

This is not a caricature. It is public, documented internal warfare.

Members have been disciplined, sidelined, or driven out for declining to affirm identity claims that bear no relationship to biological reality, common sense, or, frankly, sanity.

And here’s the bit everyone tiptoes around, so let’s say it plainly.

People who, up until the 1990s, would have been regarded as having mental health difficulties, not as an insult but as a clinical reality, are now routinely presented as simply expressing “valid identities”. Any attempt to question this is treated as cruelty. Any hesitation is labelled harm.

At some point, compassion quietly mutated into compulsory belief.

When Kindness Turns Into Make-Believe

No one is arguing for bullying.

No one is arguing against dignity.

But politics has wandered into a place where it is expected to affirm fantasies, not just tolerate people.

If someone insists they are a fairy, or a wolf, or something else that exists only in their own head, politics is now expected to nod solemnly, update the glossary, and discipline anyone who raises an eyebrow.

That is not inclusion.

That is not progress.

It gives the clear impression that we are all expected to be bonkers now, and that sanity itself is the thing that needs managing.

Once politics demands belief rather than consent, it stops being politics. It becomes theology.

Why Reform Actually Deserves Credit

And this is precisely why Reform UK keeps cutting through.

Reform does not tiptoe. It does not hold workshops. It does not commission guidance. It does not ask HR how to phrase reality.

It turns up with a great big oversize sledgehammer, looks at the nutty world of EDI, and cracks it clean in half.

While everyone else delicately debates how to “manage inclusive language around imagined identities”, Reform says: enough. Back to reality. Back to common sense.

Is it subtle? No.

Is it always elegant? No.

Is it legible to ordinary people? Absolutely.

Because Reform understands something the others don’t:

you cannot manage madness with more paperwork.

Why the Others Won’t Follow

Labour won’t go there because it’s trapped by its activist culture.

The Conservatives won’t go there because they lack the courage.

The Greens can’t go there because they’ve already left the map.

Reform can, because it does not seek approval from institutions the public no longer respects.

That’s the difference.

Back to the Job Advert

So we return to the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence role, floating serenely on LinkedIn like a piece of corporate fluff.

This is Britain now:

• serious power wrapped in managerial language,

• authority performed rather than exercised,

• recruitment rituals for jobs already decided,

• and a political class too frightened to speak plainly.

The danger is not that people notice.

The danger is that they stop taking the whole thing seriously.

When Pretending Finally Fails

A state that cannot distinguish between kindness and truth eventually loses both.

A politics that treats reality as optional cannot govern for long.

And a system that advertises power like a brand will one day discover no one believes in it.

You don’t fix that with another framework.

You fix it by remembering that reality exists, judgment matters, and not every box needs ticking.

And no, I won’t be applying.