ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of the Military Covenant on policy and policymakers, by assessing the material support offered to soldiers and the wider Forces' community before and after the Covenant's migration. It considers the extent to which the Covenant became another means of party political advantage, undermining the previous broad consensus on defense issues. The Covenant's impact can be measured by the number of policy initiatives it generated. However, improved cross-government co-ordination and the principle of no disadvantage were both rehashed from almost a decade earlier. As the Covenant's scope was extended into the area of Force protection, any breakage implied that the Government had soldiers' blood on its hands. Having taken Britain into a war whose legality and legitimacy many of the public questioned, the Labour government was out-manoeuvred and placed on the defensive by the Chief of the General Staff and a moral concept originating in military doctrine.
