 This week we saw a picture emerge of EDL founder Tommy Robinson with a group of British soldiers. Does this mean the British Army is just a BNP with Berets? No, but it does mean that in some important ways the British Army is a far-right organisation. During my time in the military I often saw people who were interested in or engaged in far-right activism, whether that was through groups like the EDL, loyalist activism or even neo-Nazi groups. On one hand we have to understand that the British Army is very attached to its own violent colonial past, while on the other we have to look at its internal culture and understand that a lot of the ideas and values on which the Army operates are about submission, power, obedience, racialised violence and things like that. You might be surprised to see a group of young soldiers excited to see Tommy Robinson, but I can tell you if you look at their regimental headgear those are young men from regiments that recruit in northern towns. Towns that have been laid waste to by 30 years of neoliberalism. It might then not be that surprising to find out that they have some sympathy for far-right ideas. If you spend any time in the kind of towns where these boys are from, you will know that their communities which have been laid waste, jobs lost, high streets gutted. It's from these towns that the very poorest boys with the lowest educational achievement are aggressively recruited by the military as per MOD policy. So only recently Jeremy Corbyn spoke publicly about how education needs to be changed to reflect Britain's colonial past. Exactly the same is true of the British Army, how we think about it and how it thinks about itself as an institution. A good example of this is that every regiment has its own colours, a huge flag embroidered with the names of towns which have been pillaged by British soldiers in India, Africa and other places around the world. These are looked upon with enormous pride. The British military prides itself on traditions that in 2018 serve neither the military nor the country. Why else would the far-right find such a cosy home in the British Army? It's time that we updated our armed forces for the 21st century. What the left needs to understand is that should a socialist government win power in this country, it will inherit an imperial army and it needs to give serious thought to what that army will look like and what it will do.