Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2026. © Richard Kemp

At a time when the misdemeanours of so many current and former politicians has dragged public esteem for British politics to record lows, it is gratifying to find a long-serving ex-MP putting his money where his mouth is by signing up for war service in Ukraine.

Jack Lopresti, who represented Filton and Bradley Stoke for the Conservatives from 2010 until he lost the seat in 2024, joined the International Legion – a formation of the Ukrainian armed forces – in November 2024. And more recently, just last month, it was announced he is serving with the Azov Brigade, a volunteer force that attracted controversy due to its far-Right origins, but is now understood to be fully integrated into Ukraine’s armed forces.

Lopresti, who was a reservist with the Royal Artillery, was vocal in parliament about defence spending, Nato commitments and the need to deter Russian aggression. He has been a strong advocate for supporting Kyiv in its fight against Putin since the full-scale invasion began four years ago this week.

The Ukrainian war has seen no shortage of statements of solidarity from European capitals; but comparatively few elected politicians have been prepared to share the burdens borne by soldiers on the frontline in that or any other war.

There are exceptions. Remarkably, Charles Goodson-Wickes, the former Conservative MP for Wimbledon, fought with the 7th Armoured Brigade in the 1991 Gulf War while still in office, the only MP to have done so since the Second World War.

Only a handful of current MPs, including Labour’s Mike Tapp and Dan Jarvis, saw regular military service before getting elected. That is hardly surprising given the minuscule size of the armed forces today.

But perhaps our national defences would be in a less parlous state if the number of veterans that reached the top end of government came somewhere close to the tally of human rights lawyers, life-long political groupies and financiers.

Of course, that was once the case. Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Jim Callaghan and Edward Heath all saw combat. Margaret Thatcher did not, but by her side was a man who had: her husband Denis.

All of them maintained strong defences, which then began a long and disastrous downward spiral under John Major and his successors as prime ministers, none of whom served in the armed forces, and the same is true of most of their cabinet ministers, which may help account for the wilful neglect of our nation’s defences.

This is not just about starvation of funding and strategic ineptitude, but also the abject failure to protect serving soldiers and veterans from predatory lawyers who have repeatedly sought to hound them through the courts.

We have seen aged former soldiers dragged into the dock for alleged offences half a century ago in Northern Ireland while IRA terrorists were handed ‘letters of comfort’ to keep them at liberty.

This Government intends to repeal and replace woefully belated Conservative legislation that granted conditional immunity and prevented vexatious prosecutions. I don’t know of any other country in history that has allowed its own serving and retired troops to be thrown so willingly to the wolves, in many cases as a result of obvious political activism.

Would all this have happened had there been more former servicemen in the upper echelons of government? I don’t for a moment suggest that combat experience is a prerequisite for parliamentary service. Indeed a life in the armed forces, with its demands for conformity and discouragement of out-of-the-box thinking, can sometimes work to the detriment of essential political pragmatism.

But we should salute Jack Lopresti, and I suspect that, as well as his direct contribution to our Ukrainian ally, we would also benefit were he to return to politics with hard experience of this war under his belt.

The thinking in the corridors of power is somewhat different. Despite the big talk about coalitions of the willing and the like, the timorous response of No 10 when asked if the Prime Minister supported Lopresti’s decision to serve in the Ukrainian army is telling: ‘We advise against travel to Ukraine.’