Eliot Wilson

There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Only three weeks ago, Sir Keir Starmer was considering delaying increasing the United Kingdom’s defence budget until the next decade. 'Whitehall sources', a catch-all term of varying reliability, said that the Prime Minister regarded the political costs of cutting public expenditure elsewhere as too great: accordingly, defence, which everyone professes to believe is important but few are willing to prioritise, would have to wait. Now the mood music has changed. The Sunday Times reports that Starmer intends to overrule Rachel Reeves and the Treasury in their insistence on no additional expenditure.

It is hard to think of a recent prime minister whose first months in office have seen defence in the headlines more often than Sir Keir Starmer. Even John Major, coming to power in 1990 as a United States-led coalition prepared to eject Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait, was dealing with an expeditionary adventure which soon concluded. Labour has come to power against the backdrop of a grindingly bloody and entrenched war in Ukraine and furious military activity in the Middle East. Starmer had also made choices: he had committed to an immediate strategic defence review. His party’s manifesto had also tried evasively to counter the Conservatives’ pledge of more money for the military by saying that it 'will set out the path to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence'.

The Munich Security Conference, which this week gathers in the Bavarian capital for its 61st edition, is a big deal in defence and foreign policy circles. When it first convened in 1963, there were just 60 delegates, but that has now grown to more than 350 heads of state, government and international organisations, ministers, senior military leaders, parliamentarians, business leaders and others. The incoming chairman of the conference is former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. Sir Keir Starmer is not among the attendees. While Boris Johnson gave speeches in 2021 and 2022, and Rishi Sunak addressed the meeting in 2023, the current prime minister will be represented by David Lammy, John Healey, Peter Kyle and Anneliese Dodds.

Over the last few years, defence spending has been higher up the political agenda than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The scale, intensity and sheer cost of the war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in February 2022 provided a shock to the system – but it only reinforced what many of us had known for a long time: the United Kingdom’s military capabilities in every domain are underfunded, stretched beyond endurance and often non-functional. But is Keir Starmer now avoid increasing defence spending at all? Last February, the House of Commons defence committee published a report entitled Ready for War?. It had damning conclusions.

The murder of three young girls in Southport last July by Axel Rudakubana was an act of extreme savagery and calculated evil. Six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were victims not only of a brutal killer but also of a system of policing, intelligence and criminal justice which failed at several points: they did not need to die. Rudakubana pleaded guilty at the beginning of his trial this week to all sixteen charges against him: three counts of murder, ten of attempted murder, one count of possession of a knife, one of ricin production and one terror-related charge. But he showed no remorse, and had told police after his arrest: “I’m glad those kids are dead, it makes me happy” and that he was “so happy, six years old.

Sir Keir Starmer arrived in Kyiv this morning. He came by train, crossing the border from Poland, since air travel into the Ukrainian capital is now unacceptably hazardous. Perhaps he regards this visit as a respite after the week’s event so far at Westminster. The Prime Minister arrived to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky bearing gifts. The centrepiece is an extensive 100-year partnership agreement between the United Kingdom and Ukraine, covering nine 'pillars' from culture and education through science, technology and healthcare to security and military assistance. This is intended to be a significant and enduring relationship. Since the general election, however, the support has seemed to some to have wavered 'This is not just about the here and now,' Starmer told the media.

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.