Being in the army is not about being the best anymore, it’s about meeting diversity targets, says Nigel Farage

And it made the army look like it was a really exciting and elite place to join.

You had to be the best to be in the British Army.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I saw a recent army advertisement. I couldn'tbelieve it. Far from be the best this is now.

This is belonging, and in the middle of a war zone, the soldier stops and prays to Allah.

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But hey, that's what it's all about. It's not about being the best anymore. No, it's about meeting diversity inclusion targets.

And over this weekend we learnt extraordinarily that this now extends to a recruitment drive to recruit more people born overseas without proper security checks, so that we can boost diversity numbers in the British Army.

Worse still, the suggestion is that Christianity should be taken out of annual Remembrance Day services.

It is all beggar’s belief, and thank goodness a host of former senior military figures have written what I think is a pretty explosive open letter.

I'll quote a couple of paragraphs to you.

“Nothing could be better calculated to destroy the esprit de corps of our armed forces than this poisonous farrago of nonsense, or to deter from serving the crown precisely the type of people most motivated and apartment to our high calling.

“Ours is a tolerant country, and this obsessive, this obsessive racialising of everything is both disgusting and reprehensible.

“Now this is a plea to Grant Shapps. We call on you, as Secretary of State for Defence, immediately to cleanse our military culture of these poisonous ideas and to order a complete reset back to our core values of patriotism and unity that for generations made our armed forces the envy of the world.”

Strong words. How and why is this all happening? Well, it is quite extraordinary.

Shapps himself has come out overnight and said a ‘woke, an extremist culture has infiltrated the army and I'm going to launch a review.’

That's right, the same Grant Shapps who this time last month was saying there's not enough diversity in the army.

And what I've learned, what I find hard to believe, is we have outsourced army recruitment to Capita, one of those classic, Blairite companies. And actually, on their website they say that they are transforming army recruitment.

It's no longer about being the best. It's no longer a meritocracy. It's now about quotas.

It is a woke army.