Eliot Wilson

Whitehall is being swept by moral outrage. Ministers, in full This Is Spinal Tap mode, have turned their pious horror up to 11 and Keir Starmer has accused the opposition of a ‘shocking tactic’, preferring ‘the elevation of the desire for retweets over any real interest in the safeguarding of children’. What dark perfidy has been done? What cynical political stunt have the Conservatives pulled, staining their hands with such baseness? Kemi Badenoch has tabled a reasoned amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is being debated at second reading today. Let me explain briefly.

Kemi Badenoch has only been Conservative leader for two months. The next general election is likely to be held in 2028 or 2029. Yet there have been persistent rumblings that she must set out clear policies if she is to win back support from voters who left the Tory fold. In The Financial Times, Robert Shrimsley warned that Badenoch “does not have as much time as she thinks”, and that “she does not have the luxury of leisure to figure it out while a grateful nation waits and watches”. Announcing specific policies at this stage would force Badenoch to create an army of hostages to fortune Shrimsley has previously won a prize for satire, so perhaps this was an unannounced return to the genre.

When Sir Keir Starmer announced in October that he had reached an agreement with Mauritius to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago, he was met with fierce and sustained criticism. The deal essentially surrendered the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), one of the 14 remaining overseas territories, to the government of Mauritius, while salvaging a 99-year lease on the island of Diego Garcia, home to a strategically vital joint UK/US military and naval base. But the Prime Minister has unexpectedly been handed an opportunity to row back on this agreement. The question is, will he take it?

Defence Secretary John Healey has raised the possibility that British military personnel could be deployed to Ukraine to carry out training missions. On a visit to Kyiv this week, he spoke about a five-point plan for increasing the United Kingdom’s support for its beleaguered ally, one aspect of which would be to 'make the training a better fit for what the Ukrainians need'. When he was asked whether that could encompass undertaking the mission in Ukraine rather than the UK, he was careful not to rule it out: 'We will look wherever we can to respond to what the Ukrainians want. They are the ones fighting.' Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple: deploying soldiers to a conflict zone in which we are not a direct combatant always carries a risk.

We should be wary about the danger of hyper-rich donors obtaining undue influence over political parties. There is none more hyper-rich than Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man by a country mile with a net worth of around $500 billion (£400 billion). There are persistent rumours that he could donate as much as $100 million to Reform, to the extent that the Tories are trying to muscle their way in and get some of the money themselves.  Deep pockets would improve Nigel Farage’s electoral prospects. But the claims that Musk could dramatically change Reform’s fortunes aren’t realistic. Musk’s donations – believed to be $227 million (£180 million) – certainly helped Donald Trump win the White House in November.

Has Keir Starmer dropped the ball on Ukraine? Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian former foreign minister, certainly thinks so. Kuleba, who stepped down from his post in September, had few kind words to say this week about how Starmer's Labour government had dealt with Ukraine in the five months or so since coming to power: The Conservatives were coordinating with the Americans but they did not restrict themselves to just following the Americans. This is the change that came with Labour. They took a position they would follow the Americans.

The dawn of a third nuclear age demands a 'national and collective sense of purpose… leadership and a willingness to act'. That was the message of the head of Britain’s armed forces when he delivered his annual lecture to the Royal United Services Institute this week. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin has been chief of the Defence Staff for three years – usually a full term – but was asked earlier this year to stay in post for a further year, until autumn 2025. His tenure has seen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel and the resulting conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran’s ballistic missile strikes on Israel and the Houthi campaign against commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Downing Street has announced that the 14th secretary to the cabinet and head of the civil service will be Sir Chris Wormald. He will succeed Simon Case when the latter stands down after four years on 16 December. Wormald, 56, has been permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care for eight and a half years, before which he was the top official at the Department for Education for four years – a true Whitehall veteran. There is no doubt that Wormald is experienced. He is likeable and highly rated, though his department has hardly stood out for excellence over the past decade and he sometimes struggled under questioning at the Covid-19 inquiry.

Keir Starmer has announced that he will introduce new legislation to make the spiking of drinks a specific criminal offence. The legal changes sound harmless, but it is entirely unnecessary.  Drink spiking is clearly illegal under section 61 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003: someone commits an offence ‘if he intentionally administers a substance to, or causes a substance to be taken by, another person’ without consent, ‘with the intention of stupefying or overpowering’ them ‘to enable any person to engage in a sexual activity’ with the victim. The offence can lead to a ten-year prison sentence, or a longer custodial term if other crimes like robbery or sexual assault are involved.

A Russian attack on the city of Dnipro earlier today included the use of an intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The RS-26 Rubezh was reportedly launched from Astrakhan Oblast on the Caspian Sea, although some analysts remain sceptical. Russia has made no official comment, but it would be the first use of an ICBM in the conflict in Ukraine, representing a deliberate raising of the stakes and a clear signal to Kyiv’s allies. Using an intercontinental ballistic missile to strike Ukraine is performative overkill On Tuesday, which marked the 1,000th day of the war, Ukrainian forces launched American-supplied MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles at an ammunition depot near Karachev in Bryansk Oblast, 70 miles inside Russia.

Defence Secretary John Healey has announced more changes to the armed forces, detailing several capabilities to be cut to achieve savings of £500 million over the next five years. The Royal Navy’s two amphibious assault ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, will be retired at the end of the year, while HMS Northumberland, a Type 23 frigate, will be decommissioned because her structural damage is ‘uneconomical to repair’. The retirement of the amphibious assault ships has profound implications for the future role of the Royal Marines The Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s two Wave-class fast fleet tankers, RFA Wave Knight and RFA Wave Ruler, will also be retired.

As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations to executive positions gradually emerge, it is difficult to know what to expect next. Elon Musk is set to run the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who organised a drugs awareness campaign under the slogan, ‘Meth. We’re on it’ and wrote in her autobiography of shooting dead her badly behaved wire-haired pointer puppy, is tapped for Secretary of Homeland Security. Trump’s choice for the critical role of Secretary of Defence is typically atypical. Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old Minnesotan educated at Princeton and Harvard, is a presenter and commentator for Fox News.

I don’t know what the Ukrainian for ‘Well, duh’ is, but it might well have been heard in Kyiv yesterday. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, observed that Ukrainian forces resisting the Russian invaders needed to be able to strike at their enemies well behind the border. ‘Ukraine cannot put up a shield to protect themselves against the 30,000 glide bombs lobbed into the Kursk oblast. Instead, what they need – and what we would need – is the ability to strike the aircraft launching these bombs on the ground.’  When he was asked to respond, the prime minister was shockingly complacent and dismissive Everyone could read between the lines.

Anyone who is serious about the condition of the armed forces and Britain’s defence policy will not look a gift horse in the mouth. Rachel Reeves’s announcement in yesterday’s Budget that the government will spend an additional £2.9 billion on defence next year is welcome and desperately needed. But while it's headline-grabbing, in reality it will make little difference to our national security and strategic posture. It is acknowledged across the political spectrum that we need to spend more on defence It is hard to think of a time, certainly since the end of the Cold War, when the international situation was so tense and challenging in so many areas.

Veterans who were dismissed from the armed forces because of their sexuality have criticised the government for the inadequacy of its compensation scheme. With a fund capped at £50 million and potentially as many as 4,000 eligible to seek redress, the average payment would be only £12,500. Military charities have dismissed this as 'inadequate and unacceptably low', lacking 'the sense of justice these veterans deserve'. This is not an issue from the distant past. When I was young, it was taken as read that openly gay people did not serve in the military. That was not to say we thought the armed forces were 100 per cent heterosexual – the first gay kiss on British television, in BBC Two’s 1974 drama Girl, was between Alison Steadman and Myra Frances playing female soldiers.