He served 40 years in uniform. He left the Royal Air Force as a wing commander on Friday. By nine o'clock on Monday morning Angus MacIntyre was at Reform UK's headquarters, and within days he had made the pledge that will define his new role. It carries two commitments, and they are not the same one. The party says it would introduce legislation in its first 100 days in government to end the historic prosecutions of British veterans. Mr MacIntyre has attached a personal promise to it: if the unjust prosecutions have not been ended within those 100 days, he will resign from his post.
"A real nation, a true nation, idolises its warriors, it doesn't criminalise them," Reform UK's new Armed Forces spokesman told The Telegraph. "A Reform government will end current and future prosecutions of both special forces and line infantry and line battalions who operated in Northern Ireland."
Neither commitment takes effect by decree. The pledge is a conditional political commitment, not legislation that exists today: it would require a Reform election victory, a bill passed through Parliament and provisions capable of surviving legal challenge. Introducing a Bill does not end a single ongoing prosecution. Whether any provision ending specified prosecutions could be lawfully enacted would depend on its design, parliamentary approval and the legal obligations that apply, which is precisely why the pledge must be judged on delivery rather than announcement.
A career spent in service
Mr MacIntyre joined the Army in 1986, commissioned into the 1st Battalion The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders after service with the 17th/21st Lancers in Germany, with detached tours alongside the Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment in arctic Norway, Northern Ireland and Brunei. He transferred to the RAF Regiment in 1999 and rose to wing commander, completing operational tours and a year at The Pentagon, where he saw how highly American commanders regard Britain's special forces. Reform UK describes him as its Shadow Armed Forces Minister; that is the party's own designation, not an office recognised in Parliament.
The Afghanistan inquiry is not a prosecution, but the strain is real
Precision matters here. The Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, chaired by Lord Justice Haddon-Cave, is a statutory inquiry examining allegations against UK Special Forces relating to detention operations between mid-2010 and mid-2013, including whether unlawful killings occurred and whether earlier military police investigations were properly conducted. Its chairman cannot make findings of civil or criminal liability. It is not itself a criminal prosecution, and being asked to give evidence does not mean an individual has been charged with an offence. It can, however, investigate serious allegations and establish the relevant facts.
Yet the scale is substantial. Around 150 SAS soldiers who served in Afghanistan have been warned they face questioning or a demand for written evidence, according to The Telegraph. In October the inquiry heard that a high proportion of SAS personnel approached had refused to answer questions, invoking protection against self-incrimination. The allegations under examination are serious, and the Afghan families affected deserve answers. Prolonged uncertainty can impose a serious personal and professional burden on those called to give evidence, even where no criminal charges arise.
Senior figures in the regiment see the damage first hand. Brigadier Ed Butler, a former commanding officer of 22 SAS and president of the SAS Regimental Association, warned in August that endless legal action against soldiers was hollowing out recruitment into the elite unit. The association has said the treatment of its soldiers presents "a threat to national security and operational readiness", and has told LBC it is prepared to mount a legal challenge against the Government.
Mr MacIntyre's warning is blunter. "Nobody wants to go to work to do the job they've been trained to do, the job they've been told to do by the government within a legal framework, and then be charged with murder as soon as they get in in the evening," he said. "That is the fracture between the government and the soldier under Labour. It continues to widen."
The Troubles Bill: Labour's protections face their own test
The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill passed the House of Commons on 20 October by 330 votes to 178 and now faces scrutiny in the House of Lords. It repeals and replaces parts of the previous Conservative government's Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, whose conditional immunity scheme and restrictions on civil claims were ruled incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights by the High Court in Northern Ireland in February 2024, with the Court of Appeal upholding that finding the following summer. Those were judicial findings against specific provisions, not the invalidation of the whole Act, and the decision to repeal and replace them is a political choice for the present Government.
The Government points to a package of amendments tabled on 19 October, including a "compelling new evidence" threshold before fresh investigations and a requirement for the Attorney General's consent to serious Troubles-related prosecutions. Whether those safeguards are sufficient to prevent years of repetitive proceedings, while still allowing credible allegations of serious wrongdoing to be properly investigated, is precisely the question the Lords must now answer. The veterans' organisations are not yet convinced: according to The Telegraph, the SAS, SBS and Special Reconnaissance Regimental Associations have jointly warned that loopholes remain.
Criticism has come from inside Labour too. Al Carns, who served 24 years as a Royal Marine and resigned as Minister for the Armed Forces on the same day as John Healey in June, warned in August that the Bill would drive veterans to Reform UK. "Accountability is not the same as perpetual investigation," he has written. "Justice is not served when the process itself becomes the punishment."
A defence establishment under strain
The wider backdrop includes the resignation of senior defence figures amid disputes over military funding. Mr Healey, now Chancellor, told Sir Keir Starmer in his June resignation letter: "You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country". Al Carns resigned as Minister for the Armed Forces the same day, telling the Prime Minister that the Defence Investment Plan was "not built for the threat we face" and was neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded. Mr Healey's Budget set a target of 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030, a figure he has since admitted is only a "target". According to the Ministry of Defence's July 2026 personnel statistics, the British Army had 73,660 UK Regular personnel at 1 July 2026, a level The Telegraph's report of the interview described as the lowest since Napoleonic times. Mr MacIntyre's assessment is stark: "You can't fight wars and endure in conflict with a lack of mass."
His broader argument about readiness, including his warning that the rebuilding of the Armed Forces will take a decade while the threat may arrive in three to five years, is a political judgement offered by a man with four decades of service behind it. It deserves a hearing. It is not yet a verified forecast.
GREAT BRITISH PAC REACTION
Great British PAC campaigns for fair, timely and proportionate treatment of everyone who has served Britain in uniform. These two things are not in conflict: Britain can investigate credible allegations of serious offences properly, and it can refuse to let process without end become punishment without verdict. It can honour its soldiers and hold the genuinely guilty to account. Any government worthy of the name must do both.
What Britain cannot accept is a system in which serving personnel and veterans face years of unresolved uncertainty, historical investigations are unnecessarily repeated without compelling new evidence, and the Armed Forces remain underfunded. The resignation of senior defence ministers over funding concerns raises serious questions about the Government's priorities. Responsibility for the record of the last sixteen months rests with the Government of the day, and the Government of the day is Labour's.
Britain owes those who served legal certainty, timely investigation and a state that stands behind them when they acted on its orders within the law. We will judge every party, including Reform UK, by whether it actually delivers those protections rather than merely promising them.
Richard Thomson, National Director of Great British PAC and former Royal Marine, said:
"Angus MacIntyre is right. A nation that asks its soldiers to defend our freedoms cannot then spend years trying to take theirs away in court.
We send the SAS into the hardest fights on earth, then put 150 of them through endless questioning years later. We pass laws that reopen old cases and treat veterans as suspects rather than hero’s. That is not accountability. It is a betrayal.
The most experienced soldiers we have are being driven out by the country they served. At a time when the threats are growing, we are making it clear that service carries a lifetime risk of prosecution. No serious country does this to its warriors. We celebrate them, or we lose them."
