Though I have always voted for them in Westminster elections, and though my political heroes are old school 'one nation' Tories like Gilmour, Pym and Heseltine, and though I view them as being less loathsome than the present lot, the wellbeing of today's Tory party does not really affect or worry me over much.
So I note as an interested observer - rather than as a concerned stakeholder, that this is actually the worst possible outcome for the Tories.
Had Dannatt continued to snipe from the sidelines without Party affiliation, he'd have been a powerful, credible and influential force working in the interests of Servicemen, and holding Governments and Politicians to account. He would have tended to be 'anti-Labour' by dint of the fact that it was Labour who committed us to Afghanistan, and because it was Labour who supplied the forces fighting there.
Had Dannatt accepted the Labour whip, any attacks he made against the Tories would have been entirely undermined, and he's have had the same credibility as any other Labour politician. His recruitment would have been something that the Tories could have roundly condemned and attacked Labour for.
Instead, by 'recruiting' him, they've undermined one of the key things that made him credible and powerful - his status as an apparently non-partisan, non politically biased expert. And that's why it's a colossal own goal.