‘I don’t need any more troops and I don’t need any more money.’ It was a striking message from General Sir Roly Walker, chief of the General Staff (CGS), not much more than a month into his tenure as the professional head of the British Army. He was speaking in the margins of the Royal […]
The Conservatives and Labour have made defence and national security core planks of their election campaigns. The Prime Minister and Keir Starmer have told the public that we are all living in a more dangerous and volatile world – with war in Europe, crises in the Middle East and an epoch-defining challenge in Asia. An […]
The Conservative Party has long been known as the ‘party of defence’, trusted by the public and the military alike to protect the UK’s national interests. But this election campaign, Labour is determined to change that. It is parking its tanks firmly on the Conservatives’ lawn as it seeks to show that in an increasingly […]
Last week, during a visit to Poland, the prime minister caused a mild media stir by announcing that the defence budget would rise over the next five years until the United Kingdom spends 2.5% of its GDP on the military by 2030. This was framed as a major boost to the country’s capabilities and resources, […]
Rishi Sunak’s commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 is long overdue. In his words, our defence industry must be put on ‘war footing’ in an ‘increasingly dangerous world’. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s machinations in the Middle East and China’s covetousness towards Taiwan, the global outlook is more threatening […]
The satellite imagery was dramatic: China has constructed a replica of the presidential palace and government buildings of Taipei in Alxa League, a remote area of Inner Mongolia. It hardly requires a suspicious mind to imagine that these facilities could be used to train soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army for an assault on the […]
The conflict in Ukraine has been a wake-up call. Not only did it show again that Russia is an immediate military threat to its neighbours, but it revealed that defence spending can be eaten up very quickly when ice-cold relations become a hot war. Europe and the United States have acted to provide Ukraine with […]
Imagine a future 50th anniversary: April 2nd, 2032. A resurgent Argentina has just landed troops on the Falkland Islands. The UK Government scrambles to respond. But after eight years of Labour rule, Britain is divided and impoverished, its Armed Forces cut to the bone. There aren’t enough ships and there aren’t enough men. No help […]
Defence has been long associated with bad PR. Whether it’s bombing a Nazi city, burning a disturbed Frenchwoman at the stake, or designing a plane whose radar instruments melt at your fingertips, the negative press sticks with you for years. These days, the reputational issues are of a different order. Sometimes the complaints are a […]
This week, a deeply uncomfortable truth has come to light, which many of us have known about for a while – that the Civil Service has become replete with senior mandarins intent on pushing fringe ideologies within their departments. The latest examples of this worrying trend are happening within our military. Thanks to recent reporting from The […]
It’s not even the end of January, and 2024 is really spoiling us on the return-of-history front. An Anglo-American taskforce is protecting merchant shipping off Aden. A US governor is defying Washington to ‘defend Texas’. And now a British general is talking about reintroducing conscription. To be fair to General Sir Patrick Sanders, he’s not […]
For a Conservative, these are fairly bleak times. However you regard the incumbent government, all the empirical data point towards a Labour victory at this year’s general election. Our likely new overlords believe in the heavy hand of the state and the performative virtue of high taxation, and regard the Brexit referendum, more than seven […]
Defence and markets are unusual bedfellows. Typically, defence is regarded as an activity which is state-provided and state-funded with very few opportunities for market solutions. However, this is not the case. As I discuss in my new paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs, there are massive opportunities for the application of private markets in […]
It is important for those of us who cover British politics for a living to be vigilant against becoming, if such a thing is possible, too jaded. Not every development is a symptom of a deep underlying trend; sometimes a personal decision is just that. Nonetheless, Ben Wallace’s announcement that he will step down from […]
Last week’s AUKUS summit in San Diego marked a profound shift in the Indo-Pacific balance of power. For the past two decades, the West has struggled to address the growing size and assertiveness of Beijing’s naval forces. As of 2020, China possesses the world’s largest navy, which it has been using to threaten and coerce […]
On the May 28, 1987, a light aircraft piloted by German citizen Mathias Rust took off from Helsinki airport. In his last radio communication, he told Finnish air traffic control that he was flying to Stockholm, yet not long after take-off he was spotted heading south across the Baltic before disappearing from radar. Finnish authorities […]
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