It was the moment when England expected Des Browne to do his duty. After days of international humiliation, 15 captured British sailors and marines were on their way home from Iran and it was time for the defence secretary to show courage, resolve and leadership to rescue the nation’s battered pride.

What did he do? He offered a little tax advice.

“He was briefed on the plan to let the captives sell their stories,” said a Ministry of Defence (MoD) insider. “He nodded it through, but he added a point as well. He wanted to make sure the sailors knew they might end up paying 40% tax.”

Forget notions of fortitude and stiff upper lips; after 10 years of Tony Blair’s rule, the priorities for Britain’s armed forces were tax and spin.

The results were soon evident. Within days, two of the sailors were recounting their ordeals in return for tens of thousands of pounds. It did not make uplifting reading.

Faye Turney, 25, recalled of her captivity: “I cried my eyes out. I asked the guards about my friends but all they did was laugh at me.”

Arthur Batchelor, the youngest of the group at 20, revealed that he had been tormented by his captors flicking their fingers against his neck and calling him Mr Bean, the buffoon played by Rowan Atkinson. They had also taken his iPod.

“All I could make out in their language were the words ‘Mr Bean’,” he said. “They were laughing at me . . . making me feel about three inches tall.”

That was about the size of the Royal Navy’s reputation after the revelations had sparked a public backlash. Not only were members of Her Majesty’s armed forces cashing in, they were also revealing their conduct to have been even more inglorious than first thought.

Browne’s display of character was no better. He manfully declared that “the buck stopped” with him — then blamed the navy and his admirals. Vice-Admiral Adrian Johns, the second sea lord, took the rap, but serving officers were privately incandescent over the way they were “stitched up” by the defence secretary and his media advisers.

Former senior figures were more outspoken. Lord Guthrie, a former chief of the defence staff, said: “It’s extraordinarily inept, the whole business. It strikes me as inept that they were taken prisoner, that they were not properly covered.

“I find it very strange that people should be proud of what they did. They were victims. They were not heroes in my view.

“Allowing them to sell their stories was astonishing. It’s against all our principles.

“Our stock has fallen as a result of them being captured in the way they were and their performance. I think it has done a tremendous amount of harm, not just for the services but for the country.”

General Sir Michael Rose, former head of the SAS, said: “At best these seamen should have been given a short weekend break, told not to talk to the press and been back on their ships. That is the proper way to handle a situation like that.”

As great naval engagements go, the Battle of iPod Gulf is a debacle that has thrown a harsh light on the state of the navy, which is facing big cuts to its resources. Browne is seen by many in the service as an ally of Gordon Brown, the chancellor, who is more intent on implementing cuts than inspiring his forces.

Tomorrow Browne faces a grilling in the House of Commons over the fiasco. Later the Commons defence select committee will hold an investigation into the affair, which threatens to make the navy look a laughing stock all over again.

The defence secretary will have to fight his corner far better if he, too, is not to be left looking like Mr Bean. THE origins of the shambles lie in the navy’s concern over cuts. At the height of its power in the mid-19th century, it could muster more forces than the seven next biggest navies combined.

Now it is the Cinderella of the three services and has been largely sidelined during the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Royal Marine commandos and the SBS, still both part of the navy, have fought with distinction in both operations, but the main contribution from the navy proper was to fire off a few token cruise missiles on the opening days of each war. Even then the United States snaffled all of the best targets.

During the attack on Afghanistan, said one senior intelligence source, the Royal Navy’s expensive cruise missiles had done “little more than rearrange the rubble” at a couple of disused Al-Qaeda training camps. Her Majesty’s ships have not seen any serious action since the Falklands and are struggling to attract the right calibre of recruits.

Even the royal family now give the “senior service” a miss. It used to be standard practice for royals to serve in the navy, a tradition followed by George V, Edward VII, George VI, Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. But Princes William and Harry have both preferred the army, although William is scheduled for a short spell in the navy next year.

Fearing further decline, navy chiefs ordered a publicity drive centred around HMS Cornwall, a frigate sent to take over last month as flagship of Task Force 158, the allied flotilla protecting the Iraqi oil installations and territorial waters.

Television crews from Sky and the BBC were flown on board the ship to film the crew at work monitoring the northern Gulf; Cornwall was to be the front-page story in Navy News, the navy’s in-house journal. But from the start the publicity drive went awry.

Cornwall, known as “the ice-cream frigate” because of its designation F99, travelled to the Gulf via Barcelona, Malta and Croatia. Along the way the crew engaged in a series of sporting events with local teams; they lost every match.

The holiday atmosphere seems to have continued when Cornwall arrived in the Gulf, amid suspicions that the crew were also distracted by the presence of the television cameras.

Despite the rants of armchair admirals, many senior figures accept that the poorly armed patrol had little choice but to surrender when it was surrounded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards while checking a ship in Iraqi waters.

However, there is fury that their only real protection, a Lynx helicopter with a heavy machinegun, was pulled off apparently without consulting or even informing them.

And there is bewilderment at the complete failure of Cornwall, with its sophisticated radar and signals intelligence equipment, to detect the Iranian vessels operating in the Iraqi territorial waters that the ship was supposed to protect.

As questions mounted over the operational failings after the 15 sailors and marines were captured, the navy frantically cast around for some way of retrieving the situation. Another key change to the MoD came into play.

In recent years the MoD has centralised its media operations and appointed a former journalist, James Clark, as its director of news.

The task of this unit, according to its own factsheet, is to provide “a 24-hour, 365-days-a-year inquiry service for the media and advice to ministers”. It also “advises ministers, the armed forces and officials on external presentation strategies”.

Lieutenant Colonel Andy Price, head of the navy’s media operations and a chum of Clark’s, began drafting a strategy for the return of the sailors and marines.

Price is no stranger to the dark arts of media manipulation: he merited a mention in the satirical magazine Private Eye after he denied a report about Afghanistan — even though he had been the source of the same report.

His hope this time was to deflect attention away from the failings of Cornwall’s operation and to concentrate instead on the treatment of the captives by the Iranians.

Price and the media centre advised that the captives give a press conference and interviews where they talked only about their arrest and subsequent treatment.

An insider at the MoD said last week: “There are two key decisions in this: one, will these people be allowed to speak to the media because they need their chain of command’s permission to do that. That was a decision taken jointly by the fleet and the press office; everybody and his uncle said those who wanted should be allowed to.

“Aside from that, there were huge sums of money flying around to families and friends of these people with a firm understanding of where it would end up.”

The second decision was whether to allow the sailors to accept the money. Should the navy resist or not? It surrendered without a fight.

The insider admitted: “We said to fleet, you are not going to stop this. You are not going to stop people offering money to family and friends or these stories emerging.”

It did not mean that ministers or commanders had to agree to sanctioning deals, but that is what happened.

A ministerial submission was sent to Browne’s office the day the arrested sailors and marines flew home. It was Maundy Thursday, a half-day in the civil service calendar.

Later that day, with preparations for a press conference under way and Browne in Scotland campaigning for the forthcoming elections, Clark talked the minister through the plans on the telephone. On the Friday the only big concern of Browne’s office was that those selling their stories should be warned of the potential tax implications.

It was a huge misjudgment. Contributors to the Army Rumour Service, a website popular with serving and former forces personnel, were aghast at the sale of the stories.

“This beggars belief. They’ve been back less than 48 hours and they’re already . . . appearing on Trisha!” wrote one.

“Maybe HMS Cornwall could make a series like The Love Boat or be used for Big Brother,” wrote another.

“Being broken by being called Mr Bean — that must be on a par with Monty Python’s Spanish inquisition and the comfy cushions,” wrote a third.

One contributor summed up the mood by asking: “Don’t they know when it’s time to zip it?”

As the outrage grew, Browne ordered full astern and, blustering amid the storm, banned the sale of any more interviews.

“Over the weekend I thought about the decision. I accepted the analysis that was put forward to me by the navy but I wasn’t content with it,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody really was content with it and I include the navy in that. I think they felt they had to make this decision but were not content.

“On Monday when I was able to take advice from senior officials and senior officers and had an opportunity myself to consider the regulations I came to a different view . . . Clearly, with hindsight, I could have made a different decision.”

The trouble was he had already hit the rocks by then.

The ban was a disappointment to Lieutenant Felix Carman, the senior officer among the captives. He had spent two days writing a diary for publication, which he had to abandon.

Carman, it turns out, was also entertaining hopes of a new career as a TV weather presenter. Last week he said: “Since I came back people have kept referring to me appearing in front of the charts [of the region where they were captured] on Iranian television.”

Being a TV weather man, rather than a naval officer, he said “does appeal”. IT took the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, an old-fashioned soldier known for his strong moral values, to restore perspective. He stepped in to make it clear that none of his men or women would be allowed to sell their stories while still serving.

The navy was left looking diminished around the world. In Australia the Sydney Morning Herald opined: “Britain’s Royal Navy is knee-deep in bilge water”. In the United States the Chicago Sun-Times said: “It seemed that Brits, once a tough-minded nation marked by self-control, had been transformed into touchy-feely devotees of a loose and self-forgiving emotionalism.” In Switzerland the newspaper Le Temps asked: “What has become of the greatness of Great Britain?”

One Whitehall official said of the affair: “As an exercise in media handling, it was completely shambolic.”

Guthrie believes that the MoD’s spin machine has lost sight of its true purpose. “The media [handlers] are not there solely for the good of the minister, depending on what the secretary of state wants or the government wants. They are there for the good of the services and they should remember that.”

Arguably, however, it is the government that is to blame for the whole shambles happening in the first place. Back-to-back tours of duty and shortages of cash have starved the forces of the equipment and training needed to maintain standards.

“The understandable controversy over selling stories should not let the government off the hook over the original incident,” said Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat defence spokesman. “We cannot avoid the crucial issue of whether our personnel are being adequately prepared, supported and equipped for the job they are being asked to do.”

The Conservatives are no less scathing. In a pamphlet entitled The Desperate State of the Royal Navy, Julian Lewis, a Tory defence spokesman, says that the navy is being sacrificed to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He writes: “The government’s devastation of the navy is an act of folly which future generations will bitterly regret.”

Browne has little sympathy, too, from parts of his own party. Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister, has demanded that Browne “carry the can” and Downing Street has happily let him totter on the end of the plank.

It allowed the editor of Warship World, a respected magazine, to lodge an electronic petition on a government website calling for whoever was responsible for the captives selling their stories to be sacked. By yesterday it had gathered 4,000 signatures.

Browne faces a daunting inquisition tomorrow and he is not well equipped to deliver a broadside in return. On one side he is hemmed in by the chancellor’s desire to cut costs, with the navy a prime target. On the other, the debacle over the captives has revealed the shortcomings of a service stretched beyond its means.

His best hope of survival may be that his earnest speeches, delivered in his soft Ayrshire accent, tend to send listeners to sleep.

As for the navy, the risk is that even if Mr Bean does not wreak further havoc, the bean-counters will.

Statement that will make or break ‘Swiss Toni’

Des Browne admits that his only knowledge of military tradition was gleaned from the wartime experiences of his father, a veteran of Dunkirk and north Africa. Now that the defence secretary faces the high jump over the sailors-for-sale fiasco, further paternal expertise might prove useful: his father went on to make detonators for RAF ejector seats.

Whether the 55-year-old Scot has a hard landing depends largely on his performance tomorrow when he makes a statement in the Commons on his role in allowing the 15 sailors captured by Iran to sell their stories.

Browne is unlikely to save his skin through oratory. A parliamentary sketchwriter once described him as “so dull that even ditchwater is thinking of lodging a libel action”. The military’s nickname for him is Swiss Toni, after the untrustworthy car salesman in The Fast Show. They recall how, within days, the announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq was followed by another about beefing up our forces in Afghanistan. One government hand offered tax-free bonuses for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, while another apparently snatched the money back.

The Army Rumour Service website (www.arrse.co.uk) describes Browne, with heavy irony, as a safe pair of hands: “A close chum of Gordon Brown’s, he can be trusted to quietly shelve any pointed questions about spending reviews.”

A military insider said: “Browne is not a hate figure but he’s been viewed with the utmost suspicion. The only thing he’s done was to insist on replacements for the ‘snatch’ Land Rovers, but that was to stop new Labour looking as if it was putting our boys in danger. He is seen as Gordon’s man who, after the Scottish elections, will announce major cuts to the navy.”

In many ways Browne is a disarming figure, more outwardly touchy-feely than his predecessors, Geoff Hoon and John Reid, whom he succeeded in May 2006. He was a human rights lawyer with a leading role in inquiries into alleged child abuse in Orkney and Ayr, uncovering evidence in Ayr that social workers had embellished stories of abuse.

He is a devoted family man who lives with his wife Maura and two sons. He turned down a grand apartment in the 18th-century Admiralty House in Whitehall after joining the cabinet, saying he already had a flat in London and would be spending as much time as possible back home in Ayrshire. Besides, he has a season ticket for Celtic FC.

Only weeks into the job of defence secretary he was criticised for failing to turn up to the Commons for an emergency debate on Afghanistan. He was at his surgery in his Kilmarnock and Loudoun constituency.

Last year he told The Sunday Times that, as a father, he felt a responsibility for the young British soldiers killed overseas and was deeply affected when he attended his first repatriation ceremony for the bodies. “What struck me at Brize Norton [RAF base] as these young men brought their comrades home — every single one of them looked like my boy, my 20-year-old son.”

Browne was born on March 22, 1952 in Kilwinning, an Ayrshire town dominated by a munitions factory, and lays claim to a “solid working-class” background. As a boy he looked forward to day trips to Glasgow because his parents always bought him a special treat — a Commando comic detailing wartime derring-do against the Hun. That, and his father’s experiences, were the extent of his military grounding before taking over the Ministry of Defence.

At his local Catholic secondary school in Ayrshire he declared that he wanted to be a lawyer; after studying law at Glasgow University he began a legal career. In 1997 he won the safe Labour seat of Kilmarnock and Loudoun and became parliamentary private secretary to Donald Dewar, secretary of state for Scotland. He rose quietly and largely unnoticed.

Now, after only 11 months at defence, Browne has become a liability. On the plus side, few of Tony Blair’s ministers have ever declared “the buck stops here”. The downside is that his Commons statement tomorrow may turn out to be a suicide note.

Then the question will be: will he try to sell his own story?

Yet more budget cuts for a shrinking fleet

The Iranian gunboat threat may be gone, but Royal Navy chiefs are all too aware of something else looming over the horizon — budget cuts.

The service is expecting to mothball half its surface fleet as a quid pro quo for Gordon Brown agreeing to pay the £3.9 billion cost of two new aircraft carriers. The move is planned as part of cuts designed to remove a “black hole” of about £700m in the defence budget.

Current strength

Forty-four major surface ships. The navy now has just eight destroyers and 17 frigates. When Tony Blair came to power, it had 12 destroyers and 23 frigates.

The government has put 13 of the fleet in mothballs, but refuses to reveal which ones. Opposition parties complain that the move is a “stealth” cut in the size of the fleet.

Further reductions

The navy is in line to lose all four of its Type22 frigates, which include HMS Cornwall, the ship now patrolling Iraqi waters. Previously seen as sacrosanct because of their flexibility and intelligence-gathering capability, they are now deemed too expensive to run.

It will also lose two Type42 destroyers which are important for the fleet’s air defence capability.

Two of the new Type45 destroyers and two Astute submarines are likely to be cancelled before they are built.

Shore bases

The only consolation for the navy will be a reprieve for its dockyards at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Rosyth and Faslane. A review was expected to recommend closing one of the sites, but it is now thought more likely that parts of the facilities at Plymouth and Portsmouth will be sold instead.

Force deployments

The navy’s commitments worldwide have barely changed despite the cuts and are now impossible to maintain year-in year-out. They have been pared down repeatedly to match the dwindling number of ships available.

When Blair took over No10, the navy’s permanent commitments were one frigate or destroyer to the Nato Squadron — Atlantic; one to the Nato Squadron — Mediterranean; one patrolling the UK’s coast; one the north Atlantic and Caribbean; one the south Atlantic; and one the Indian Ocean and Far East.

Defence cuts announced in 2004 by Geoff Hoon, the then defence secretary, axed 15 vessels, including three destroyers and three frigates, leaving the navy’s commitments in tatters.

The responsibility to the north Atlantic and Caribbean has been reduced to just nine months of every year, as has the commitment to the Mediterranean.

The pledge to keep an escort vessel in the Gulf and another in the Indian Ocean and Far East has been reduced to just one escort combining both roles.

Will it get worse?

The loss of a further six escort vessels will mean that at least one, probably two, commitments will have to go.

It raises the possibility that the ship patrolling the south Atlantic may be withdrawn, leaving the Falklands exposed for the first time since the Argentine invasion 25 years ago.

Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the first sea lord, warned in February that the navy needed an extra £1 billion a year, adding that otherwise “we could turn into the Belgian navy, and if we do, I’m gone”.

‘Rent an admiral’ past of man in stories storm

The second sea lord, who gave permission for the Royal Navy captives to sell their stories, has himself been touted for hire for fundraising events.

Adrian Johns was part of a “rent-an-admiral” scheme used to help pay for the celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005.

While investigating how the navy was strapped for cash, a Sunday Times reporter posed as a City businessman and was told that Vice-Admiral Johns, as he then was, would be available to act as host at a dinner for an amateur football team of City workers.

Diners would have been met by Johns at an official Royal Navy residence for early evening drinks. They would then be escorted to HMS Victory where a Royal Marine quartet would play music of their choice.

One of the officers organising the events, Lieutenant Commander Nigel McTear, told the reporter: “[The vice-admiral will be] there in all his finery, or whatever rig you deem necessary or desirable.

“If you said it was black tie, he would wear his naval evening dress. If you said it was a lounge suit, he would wear his lounge suit.”

Would the vice-admiral make a short speech, perhaps with some jokes? “Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

We have mess dinners a lot and we very rarely sit down and talk about politics. These people are excellent at it. He would make a very good after-dinner speaker.”

McTear even said the vice-admiral would consider presenting a “player of the year” award while the Royal Marines played the Match of the Day theme tune.

“It’s a very nice touch,” said McTear. “I can certainly ask. I am sure he would be delighted.”

Last week an MoD spokesman defended the commercialisation: “The Royal Navy was proud to host fundraising dinners on HMS Victory that helped raise money to support the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. HMS Victory is the flagship of the second sea lord and he hosted some of these events.”

Jon Ungoed-Thomas

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