Eliot Wilson

Hallowe’en is nearly over for another year. Thank goodness, you might say. Each October, many Brits scratch their heads about when this festival became such a big thing. I am as guilty as the next person in doing so: only last weekend I reflected, with a combination of curiosity and weariness, that 'when I was young', October 31 was simply not as hotly anticipated a date in the calendar. The blame for Hallowe’en inflation is often directed at the Americans. But it's not fair to blame our US cousins. Hallowe’en is something of an ancient Christian tradition.

Sir Keir Starmer is proving to be an unlucky prime minister. This week began with a demonstration of his haplessness. The Prime Minister travelled to Ankara to announce an £8 billion deal to supply the Turkish air force with 20 new Eurofighter Typhoons, beginning in 2030. Yet the political headlines in Britain were full of other more embarrassing issues: the collapsed China spy trial case, the accidental release of a convicted sex offender due for deportation, the aftermath of Labour’s humiliating loss of the Senedd seat in the Caerphilly by-election. The commercial deal with Turkey is important. Starmer described it in his strange, resentful, maundering way as 'the biggest fighter jet exports deal in a generation', which is subject to several qualifications.

There have been 14 cabinet secretaries since the post was established in 1916. The first, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, served for nearly 22 years; in stark contrast, there are now reports that the 14th and current incumbent, Sir Chris Wormald, will be gone by the New Year, having served just 12 or 13 months. The problem is leadership, or rather a glaring lack of it Wormald was appointed in December 2024 after eight-and-a-half years as permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, to replace the controversial Simon Case.

It didn't take long for a judge to deliver his withering verdict on a judicial review application into the use of SAS force in an IRA ambush. The legal challenge over the killing of three Provisional IRA (PIRA) men in June 1991 was described as 'utterly divorced from reality' by Mr Justice McAlinden. At the High Court in Belfast, McAlinden pulled no punches: Three PIRA terrorists drove a stolen car from Moneymore, County Londonderry, to Coagh in order to murder a soldier 'This Court is being asked to slow the passage of time down, to analyse events in freeze-frame and to address the issue of absolute necessity in slow-motion… It is ludicrous to suggest that this court should analyse the events of the day in question in that manner.

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented (depending on your benchmark) state visit to the United Kingdom is underway and the deals are flowing. Sir Keir Starmer’s government desperately needs good news, not only economically but also to distract from the chaos everywhere else. He and his ministers will be hoping that a contract between the Ministry of Defence and Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies will be one of many positive outcomes. Palantir’s software essentially integrates the customer’s data with a large language model and allows ultra-fast decision-making drawing on huge amounts of information.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, having handed over his responsibilities last week after four years as chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), began his new life with a speech at the Institute for Government. His 20-minute address was no bland reminiscence: the former professional head of Britain’s armed forces had a great deal to get off his chest. He was positive about much that had happened over the past four years. The UK had led the way in supporting Ukraine, Nato had become larger and stronger and the 'Coalition of the Willing' had shown that European nations could act quickly and effectively.

The 24 hours within which Donald Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine have turned into more than six months of desultory negotiations, and there is still no sign of even a temporary halt to the fighting. This is a blow for the so-called 'coalition of the willing', the loose affiliation of 31 countries assembled by Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron to help implement the terms of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. There had first been informal discussions between the UK and France about creating some kind of alliance as early as November 2024, but the Prime Minister formalised the idea in March this year when he hosted a summit in London and committed the coalition to supporting 'a strong, lasting deal that delivers a permanent peace in Ukraine'.

It is commonplace to accuse politicians of being out of touch. There is often some truth in the charge, and our elected representatives take it on the chin. One of the least likely politicians to face this charge has always been John Healey: the defence secretary has been one of the most sensible and pragmatic ministers in Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet – not a high bar, admittedly. And yet there are signs that he has succumbed to the Ministry of Defence’s corrosive habit of dealing with the world as it wants it to be, not as it is. Our armed forces are in no position to deploy significant numbers of troops to Ukraine We all watched the news from Friday’s summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage.

There has always been something mad about the government’s deal over the Chagos Islands. The British Indian Ocean Territory was formed in 1965 from the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago and over 1,000 smaller individual islands. They had previously been administered as part of the Crown Colony of Mauritius, a British possession since 1810. Mauritius became independent in 1968 and had long claimed sovereignty over the BIOT, which the United Kingdom had consistently rejected and which has never been upheld by a judgement in any international court.

The British Army’s newest formation, the King’s Gurkha Artillery (KGA), has unveiled the cap badge it will wear. This is a huge moment of symbolism for any army unit: the army is a federation of battalions and regiments which attract and inspire fierce loyalty, and it is at that level that British soldiers seek their real collective identity. 117 pages (seriously) of the Army Dress Regulations specify how cap badges are worn. In this case, however, the new badge – the crossed Gurkha khukhuri and a field gun representing the Royal Artillery – is concealing at least as much as it represents. I am absolutely in favour of raising more Gurkha units.

Yesterday the Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed that its permanent secretary, David Williams, will be stepping down in a matter of weeks. He has served for just over four years, almost exactly the average tenure of his predecessors since the department was created in 1964, but it is difficult to regard the timing as a coincidence. It is still not yet three weeks since the catastrophic loss of data on Afghan nationals and others, and the MoD’s use of a super-injunction, were disclosed to parliament by defence secretary John Healey. This is not a failing individual. This is an ingrained, systemic, cultural malaise. And it has to be fixed. Williams is not explicitly being sacked: permanent secretaries very rarely are.