Eliot Wilson

Sometimes it feels as if the government’s approach to defence and security could be summed up by the venerable punchline of the Irish farmer, 'I wouldn’t have started from here'. Despite having had more than four years as Leader of the Opposition to prepare, Sir Keir Starmer never quite seems able to seize the initiative as Prime Minister, often being left puce and blinking. Yesterday saw the publication of the UK’s national security strategy (NSS) 2025, Security for the British people in a dangerous world. It had been announced in February and promised before this week's Nato summit (in fact, it was released on the summit’s first day).

Today is the first day of Nato’s annual summit. Some have billed it as potentially the most important meeting in the alliance's recent history, while others have played down any expectations of major announcements. One issue which will undoubtedly concern the 32 Nato heads of state and government is the level of defence spending. Nineteen years after it was first agreed by defence ministers and 11 years after it was reaffirmed in the Wales Summit Declaration, the target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence is expected to be met by all member states in 2025. It is clear, however, that 2 per cent is woefully inadequate. Rutte said in a recent speech that this summit would agree a new target of 5 per cent – 3.5 per cent on core military requirements and the remaining 1.

Members of an activist group called Palestine Action have broken into the Royal Air Force’s largest base, RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, and vandalised two Airbus Voyager refuelling aircraft. With breathless self-congratulation, the organisation said its members ‘used electric scooters to swiftly manoeuvre towards the planes’, sprayed red paint into the turbine engines and used crowbars to damage the fuselages of the aircraft. The red paint, of course, is symbolic of Palestinian bloodshed. https://twitter.

Mark Rutte, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, has been secretary general of Nato for less than nine months. Rutte knew when he decided to seek the job that it would not be easy, but even the famously phlegmatic and unflappable Dutchman cannot have foreseen the intensity of events. Even so, he has stepped up to the challenge. At the Royal Institute of International Affairs, yesterday, he issued a stark warning: This is a huge political and financial headache for Sir Keir Starmer Because of Russia, war has returned to Europe… Russia has teamed up with China, North Korea and Iran. They are expanding their militaries and their capabilities.

With the Strategic Defence Review finally concluded and published, the government has reportedly chosen its candidate to implement the recommendations and changes. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, currently Chief of the Air Staff, will replace Admiral Sir Tony Radakin as Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and professional head of the armed forces later in the year. His task will be to lead Britain’s sailors, soldiers and airmen into a 'new era of threat, which demands a new era for UK defence'. Radakin had been appointed to a three-year term as CDS in 2021, but in March last year he agreed to stay on for an extra year. Summer 2025 was therefore pencilled in for the selection of his replacement; yet several unexpected factors still emerged.

This weekend has not been a masterclass in political communications by the government. Selected morsels of the Strategic Defence Review were dropped over several days, concluding with an anodyne launch by the prime minister at BAE Systems in Govan. The result: the prime minister and the defence secretary contradicting each other on defence spending, a rightly furious tirade from the speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, for neglecting Parliament and an urgent question from the Opposition. They are not good at this. The SDR was never going to be a radical reassessment of Britain’s place in the world It is plainly unacceptable that some journalists had sight of the full text of the SDR five hours before Members of Parliament could obtain copies.

For the past three months there has been an exchange of bureaucratic fire across the 600 yards that separate the Cabinet Office from parliament. Matt Western, the Labour MP who chairs the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS), is engaged in epistolary warfare with the dour-but-canny Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and minister in charge of the Cabinet Office. The casus belli is whether Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, should appear as a witness in front of the committee to discuss his role. The post of national security adviser was created by David Cameron in 2010.

When Sir Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour party five years ago, it must have been a feat of imagination to picture himself as prime minister. It would surely have gone beyond his strangest fever dreams to think he would be dealing more or less weekly with defence policy. That he would be making spending decisions with an eye to placating President Donald Trump probably would have caused some kind of internal short circuit. Yet here we are. It is five weeks until Nato’s annual summit, held this year in The Hague, the first such gathering since Trump returned to the White House.

Fans of the classic British sitcom will feel a warm glow, as details of the forthcoming strategic defence review (SDR) were revealed this weekend. It leads with a proposal for a 'home guard' of civilian volunteers to protect the UK’s critical national infrastructure of power plants, airports, telecommunications networks and subsea connectors. Predictably, this cued up references to Dad’s Army, Captain Mainwaring and the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) raised in the dark days of 1940.

I’m old enough to remember the last years of the Cold War. There were definite signs of a thaw by the time of my childhood – there were weary sighs when I wrote about the Reykjavík Summit for my prep school magazine – but the threat of genuine conflict still hovered over West and East, and we all understood that such a conflict could be existential. If nothing else, it currently provides a tinge of nostalgia to the strategic frostiness with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Telegraph reports that officials have been instructed to update contingency plans for a direct attack on the United Kingdom by a foreign power.