So, No 10 drafting letters for people to sign was true.

Downing Street doesn’t send out letters and ask people to sign them in support of Remain.  That’s what we’ve always been led to believe.  But like you I was always more than a little sceptical about that spin by No 10.

And today our scepticism seems to have been justified.  In today’s Daily Telegraph Field Marshal Lord Guthrie explains why he signed the original letter and why he has now changed his mind and now backs the Leave campaign.

In his interview with the Telegraph he says, in February, he was telephoned by a young military assistant in 10 Downing Street who, like Guthrie himself, had served in the SAS.  The question posed was, would he sign the letter No 10 had drafted?  So, No 10 was drafting letters.

Anyhow, Guthrie agreed, partly out of a feeling of comradeship (he too is SAS). 

But today he says “I regret doing that.  I think I made a mistake.  Now I’ve thought about it some more.”

So, what’s happened in the intervening period? Why has he changed his mind? 

We all know there is a paper circulating with the proposals for the joint EU army that is effectively embargoed until after our referendum.  And it is that paper that Guthrie is very concerned about and the damage it could do to the security of the UK, surely the first priority of any elected government.

His anxiety about a growing EU role in defence, leading to a European Army, leads him to comment:  “I think a European Army could damage NATO. It is expensive.  It’s unnecessary duplication to have it. It would appeal to some euro vanity thing.”

Given he has nothing to gain from his intervention unlike people like people who work for organisations that are so entwined with or rely on the EU for their existence, Lord Guthrie is one person we should be listening to.