Mercer, who resigned from the role last year because of the treatment of soldiers serving in Northern Ireland, said the Department of Defense was not a “professional work environment” and his fellow ministers treated him as a “rope drug”. In a lengthy interview with the Institute for Government thinktank, Mercer, a former military officer, said that Ben Wallace’s former boss, the Secretary of Defense, ignored his calls and messages for a fortnight. “It was very difficult,” he said. “I once tried to hold him for two weeks without success. He refused, of course, but when he picked up his phone and showed me the missed calls and messages, he had no choice. “It was really sad – I liked the guy.” Mercer expressed surprise at the way ministers treated their civil servants. “If you talked to such people in the army, they would punch you in the mouth,” he said. He also criticized the special advisers who have multiplied under Boris Johnson, with some ministers having up to five. “They act like politicians who were drunk with power in the Russian army to make sure everyone was in line, who have watched too many political dramas on the television station and who believe that the way to do things is to fuck everyone.” , he said. “The way they continue is just crazy, completely insane. “No other company would operate like that because it would be fired.” Mercer has long fought to save veterans of the armed forces, as he saw the embarrassing prosecution of alleged offenses committed during the conflict, including in Northern Ireland. In his interview, he describes how he “lost control” of the issue by Wallace and Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, and failed to keep Johnson in a veterans’ promise he made during the Conservative leadership campaign. in 2019. Mercer said he told Johnson at one point that “I could not trust anything anyone told me,” even in the prime minister’s office, and that Johnson, Wallace and Lewis were blaming each other for the lack of progress. . “I was caught in the middle, but with absolutely no tools, leverage, antiquity or strength to do anything about it; a drug on a rope,” he said. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Lewis recently tried to address the issue of inherited persecution by introducing the Legacy and Reconciliation bill for Northern Ireland, which would grant amnesty to fighters on both sides. A Wallace spokesman declined to comment.
