Eliot Wilson was a House of Commons clerk, including on the Defence Committee and Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee. He is a writer and commentator, and contributing editor at Defence On The Brink.
Yesterday the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited London for the first time since he took office in May. He and the prime minister have met on a number of occasions, and although the two lawyers are different characters – Sir Keir Starmer, the stiff, soi disant progressive human rights barrister; Merz, the abrasive, hard-nosed corporate
‘Afghanistan’ was the heading of Defence Secretary John Healey’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday – a word that hardly does justice to a three-year saga involving a catastrophic security breach and loss of data by the Ministry of Defence, a superinjunction and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Ministers and civil servants
If Defence Secretary John Healey didn’t have an anxious and unsettled weekend, he should have done. The Ministry of Defence once again has serious questions to answer over equipment, this time the F-35 strike aircraft programme, the cutting edge of the Royal Air Force’s offensive capabilities. It is a political commonplace that our executive faces
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a ‘wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable’ threat to the United Kingdom. That was the sobering conclusion this week of the intelligence and security committee, which has spent several years examining Iranian policy and activity, taking evidence and analysing a huge amount of classified information. The committee’s chairman, Lord Beamish (former
The ‘grey zone’ is the kind of ominous jargon beloved of the military, but for once it is well named: a wide range of hostile activities between states which stops short of the threshold of full-scale conflict, including espionage, cyber disruption and disinformation. It is a state which is neither peace nor war, and it
It is unquestionably the case that people who should have known better were blinded by the Capri-Sun King’s glare when they reassured us that Donald Trump would not abandon Ukraine, that a second Trump administration would not really cut off military aid to Kyiv or effectively offer a free pass to Vladimir Putin. Yet that
The government published its National Security Strategy 2025 earlier this week, a strange pushmi-pullyu document building on some policy reviews and anticipating others. It is disappointing and unfocused. The national security strategy was accompanied by an announcement perhaps just as significant: the government will buy at least 12 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning strike fighters which
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
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
Operation Midnight Hammer, America’s air and missile strikes against Iran at the weekend, did not involve the United Kingdom. Although the Prime Minister was informed of the military action in advance, there was not, so far as we know, any request from the United States for British approval, participation or support, and Sir Keir Starmer
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
As Donald Trump hastily dashed home from the G7 meeting in Canada to deal with the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to speak to reporters. The G7 resolution on Iran, he said, ‘was about de-escalation’. ‘The thrust of the statement is in accordance with what I was saying on
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
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.
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
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
This Strategic Defence Review has been a long time coming. Back when he was still shadow defence secretary, John Healey had promised a ‘strategic defence and security review’ as far back as May 2022. The process was then launched eleven days after the Labour government took office last July. There had been reviews in 2010,
Your starter for ten: what is the difference between an ambition, a promise, a certainty and a commitment? If you can work it out, send a postcard to 10 Downing Street, SW1A, and you may have clarified the government’s plans on defence spending. Today, ten months after it was launched and following a weekend of
Donald Trump did not get to where he is today by taking no for an answer. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, could scarcely have been clearer when he visited the White House earlier this month that the President’s notion of Canada becoming America’s 51st state was not even being entertained. ‘Canada is not
The Security and Defence Partnership which the government agreed with the European Union this week has had more spin applied to it than a thousand cricket balls. The central argument in its favour, apart from vacuous reiki-like attempts to change the ‘mood’ of relations with the EU, was that it would allow the UK defence
