Boris Johnson’s fanzine the Daily Mail predictably fell hook, line and sinker for their hero’s offer to send in “our tanks” to help the Ukrainian war effort.
As ever with Johnson’s offers, it’s as well to read the small print. The Mail conceded some paragraphs down that it wasn’t even sure itself what this actually meant. “It’s thought that the British Army will send Challenger 2 tanks to Poland so the Poles can give their former Soviet-era T-72s to Zelensky’s defenders,” its reporters wrote, lamely.
“The fact is we have no shortage of tanks and the last thing we want is to take on Britain’s clapped-out Challenger 2s,” says my man in the Polish military. “Johnson can send them off to the scrap metal merchants himself rather than dump them on us.”
It turns out the British army is looking forward to replacing these old bangers with 250 of America’s SEPv3 version of its Abrams M1 2A MBTs, the most modern tank in the US inventory. Poland is itself about to take delivery of 28 Abrams tanks from US army stocks for initial training, with the full order expected to be completed by 2026.
In 2019, Penny Mordaunt, then the defence secretary, labelled the Challenger 2s as “obsolete”.
Meanwhile, as the Mail huffs and puffs to its readers that it’s time to “move on” from Partygate, I am reliably informed that even Paul Dacre – lately brought back to the paper in a grandee role – has privately given up Johnson for dead. Expect the paper to come out strongly for Liz Truss when the leadership contest officially begins.
Daily Mail falls for Boris Johnson’s apparent offer to help Ukrainian war effort
The Polish military has no shortage of tanks and the last thing they want is Britain's old Challenger 2s, one source tells MANDRAKE
