Lincoln Jopp

I want to add my own words of tribute to my brothers in the Irish Guards. My warrior sergeant was a man a called Glyn Crawley. As a result of an accident he had, I think as a child, he only had one eye, and he was known universally as the “one IG”, which is one for the military among us to appreciate. In the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, when we were Taskforce Lashkar Gah, we had Sergeant Dale Alonzo McCallum, who we inherited from the Irish Guards and who rebadged as a Scots Guardsman. He was tragically killed by sniper fire in Afghanistan. I paid tribute to him at the time as undoubtedly the coolest Scots Guardsman ever to walk the earth. No doubt his time in the Irish Guards prepared him for that role admirably. The Minister may not be aware that the Irish Guards have also spawned the Blackthorn Rally, members of which go on two wheels and four to some of the craziest places in the world—not least the northern Sahara, Tanzania and Kenya. This year, for the organisation’s 10th anniversary, they are going to Colombia. Sadly, I will not be joining them, because I will be enjoying the joys of the Conservative conference in Birmingham instead. What this extraordinary group of mostly Micks do—