Eliot Wilson

The symphony of criticism aimed at the government for failing to live up to its promises of boosting Britain’s defences came to its crescendo this week. The lead author of last year’s strategic defence review (SDR), former Labour defence secretary and Nato secretary general Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, gave a speech at Salisbury’s Guildhall in which he savaged Sir Keir Starmer’s administration: he identified 'a corrosive complacency today in Britain's political leadership' and accused ministers of paying 'lip service' to 'the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger'. One of the mainstays of the criticism aimed at the government is the months-long, ongoing delay in publishing the defence investment plan (DIP).

The old joke runs that you can tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving. It is unfair – our elected leaders rarely indulge in flat-out, unambiguous untruths – but part of politics is certainly about presenting complex issues in a favourable light. The current government has its own strange and maddening approach to this, but I will come back to that. Robertson’s rebuke is especially important because he was the lead author of last year’s Strategic Defence Review which Sir Keir Starmer hailed as a ‘landmark’ document Outside the arrogant utopianism of Zack Polanski’s Green party, there is a widespread consensus that the United Kingdom needs to spend more money on defence.

The Royal Navy has not had a good few weeks in reputational terms. It was nothing short of humiliating that it took three weeks to get the destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean after RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was attacked by Iranian drones on 1 March. The ship was the only one of six Type 45 destroyers available for operations (and has now had to put into port at an undisclosed location because of a water supply issue). Then it emerged that a frigate of the Russian Navy had escorted two shadow fleet tankers through the English Channel this week. Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s tough talk about boarding parties and 'starving Putin’s war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign in Ukraine', the ships were unmolested.

With Donald Trump’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die… never to be brought back again’ looming on Tuesday night, a temporary two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran was agreed. The arrangement, mediated by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is fragile, but showed who the leading players in the current conflict are. Starmer seems to have created an image of himself as an influential but essential eirenic figure on the world stage, a diplomatic heavyweight with invaluable convening power Sir Keir Starmer, by contrast, appeared to be confused about his own role in the conflict.

There are those who will claim that Sir Keir Starmer has handled the UK’s response to America’s war with Iran skilfully and diplomatically. That said, one in ten of the population believes in astrology, so fringe positions will always attract some support. I would not even be sure the Prime Minister himself belongs to this particular clique. Starmer does, though, seem conscious that his stance was too passive and inscrutable when Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February and has been playing catch-up since then. The latest proposal for Britain’s contribution to containing and managing the conflict has been discreetly briefed to journalists.

It was good news, albeit good news of the your-house-hasn’t-burned-down variety. Last week, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that Leonardo UK had been selected for a £1 billion contract to provide the armed forces with a new medium helicopter, thereby securing the future of the company’s factory at Yeovil and 3,300 jobs dependent on it. It had not been an easy journey to the awarding of the contract. Leonardo was the only bidder, with Airbus, Boeing and Lockheed Martin having dropped out between the announcement of the competition in 2022 and the end of the bidding process in 2024. The MoD had also dragged its feet after it was clear that Leonardo was the only bidder, much to the frustration of the company’s CEO, Roberto Cingolani.

With Operation Epic Fury in its sixth day, it is hard to tell how long the current United States military campaign against Iran will last. It may not be swift; yesterday, the US Senate rejected a resolution to halt further action. Meanwhile, President Trump has been alarmingly indifferent to the question: Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes. Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth struck a different note with reporters: 'This is not Iraq, this is not endless.' Yet he has refused to rule out deploying ground forces to Iran and later said, 'We have only just begun to fight.

Britain’s armed forces lack the mass, readiness and resilience needed to produce a credible deterrent in an era of intensifying threats. The danger comes not only from an aggressive and expansionist Russia but from a reckless and murderous Iranian régime with its back currently to the wall, while China continues to use any means at its disposal to advance its interests globally. To begin to meet these threats, His Majesty’s government must give an absolute and unqualified commitment to increase core defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, with a clear timeline for delivery. This cannot wait. This argument has been set out in an open letter to the Prime Minister by the analysis and advocacy group Defence on the Brink.

Last week could have been worse for Sir Keir Starmer, but only because he remains Prime Minister – for the time being. After the tawdry relationship between Lord Mandelson and the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein surged back into the headlines, Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was forced to resign as a burnt offering. For a while it seemed as if Starmer’s tenure as leader of the Labour party had hours rather than days, weeks or months, left to run. Labour MPs are understandably desperate. But they are losing touch with reality Survival is a basic human instinct.

Micheál Martin, now in his second stint as Ireland’s Taoiseach, is by our standards a political veteran, having led Fianna Fáil for the past 15 years. But like our Prime Minister Keir Starmer, after finding domestic politics ever more challenging, he is finding solace on the international stage. Micheál Martin’s response was simply not the way allies or partners act towards each other Last week, Martin lived up to the Irish desire to be the ‘Most Oppressed People Ever’. In the Dáil he gave the Irish government’s official response to the final report from Operation Kenova, the investigation into the handling by British security forces of the agent within the Provisional IRA codenamed ‘Stakeknife’.

Parliament is pointless without debate. It is there in the definition of the word itself: the Old French parlement derives from parler, to talk or discuss. Parliament is a forum in which our elected representatives debate how we live as a society and a nation. It has not been as effective or interested in that central purpose as it should for some years. This week, however, a House of Commons select committee drew a line in the sand and prevented debate being further marginalised.