Eliot Wilson was a House of Commons clerk, including on the Defence Committee and Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee. He is contributing editor at Defence On The Brink and senior fellow for national security at the Coalition for Global Prosperity
Nato marks its 75th birthday today, but the alliance is in no mood for celebration. At its foundation, and for much of its lifetime, Nato worked well. On 4 April 1949, representatives of a dozen countries signed the North Atlantic treaty in Washington DC ‘to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded
The news that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, had been arrested and charged with rape and other historical sexual offences, was a rare moment of genuine shock in politics. Politicians on all sides have been scrabbling to respond, to understand what has happened and what it means for the DUP
The prime minister is in Cumbria today, visiting Barrow-in-Furness to announce a ‘national endeavour’ to support the defence and civil nuclear industry. This includes a partnership with companies including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock to invest more than £760 million in skills, jobs and education over the next six years. The Barrow Transformation Fund
England’s football kit has changed dramatically over the years but one feature typically remains unchanged: the cross of St George. Nike, which is designing the England kit for this summer’s Euro 2024 tournament in Germany, has redesigned the red and white flag in navy, light blue and purple. Why did it think doing so was
Humza Yousaf might have hoped for a better week. On Wednesday, the First Minister gave a speech at the European Institute of the London School of Economics, setting out why Scotland’s economic future would be brighter if it was an independent country. Some in the room were enthusiastic, but the Scotsman quietly drew attention to
Lee Anderson’s defection from the Tories to Reform UK was hardly a surprise. In fact, it seemed almost inevitable. But that Anderson rose to the position he did within the Conservative party to become deputy chairman, before flouncing out, raises questions about Sunak’s political judgement. Anderson became an emblem of the Red Wall, yet is
‘Stakeknife’, a double agent who was an informant for the British Army while working within the innermost counsels of the Provisional IRA, probably cost more lives than he saved. That is the damning verdict of Operation Kenova, which has spent seven years – and £40 million – probing whether Stakeknife was effectively permitted to kill
The SNP seems determined not to stick to the day job of actually running the country. Scotland’s government this week launched a publication called ‘Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s Place in the World’. It set out policies for something that doesn’t exist – an independent Scotland – in areas in which the devolved
The Democratic Unionist Party is nothing if not intransigent. For many years, the DUP provided a masterclass in judging the past, and tying it round the neck of the future. Its founder, Ian Paisley, was best known for uttering the same word three times: ‘Never! Never! Never!’. But now that the party has once again
Wednesday’s chaotic procedures in the House of Commons have handed an enormous soapbox to the SNP’s Stephen Flynn. The MP for Aberdeen South, who has led the Scottish National Party’s Westminster group since December 2022, has been intoning gravely that the debate ‘descended into farce’ and, with suppressed fury, told the speaker that he no
A century ago today, Robert Mugabe was born. The man who would come to rule over Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2017 was a brutal and autocratic tyrant. Mugabe shattered his country’s economy, oversaw vicious human rights abuses and left public services, especially healthcare, in ruins. But while Britain would ultimately see Mugabe as an adversary,
The Munich Security Conference has been nicknamed the ‘Davos of defence’. Every year, politicians, security analysts, military leaders and campaigners assemble at the five-star Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Germany’s third city for a couple days of schmoozing, networking and lecturing. When this year’s conference concluded on Sunday, the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen played an
When the Berlin Wall fell, the British Army had 152,800 soldiers. Tony Blair’s government cut this to 110,000; David Cameron’s reduced it to 87,000. Plans to let that number fall to 82,000 were accelerated by the former defence secretary Ben Wallace. It’s generally accepted that by next year numbers will have dropped to 72,500. That’s
The appointment of a new executive by the Northern Ireland Assembly on Saturday was a hugely significant moment. There was no government at Stormont for exactly two years from 3 February 2022 until Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin accepted the assembly’s nomination to be first minister at the weekend. She is the first Republican leader
It has been nearly two years since the last elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Sinn Féin, for the first time, emerged as the largest party, with 27 of the 90 seats, two ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). But the assembly has only met four times since then. Business cannot proceed until a
‘Up yours, Delors!’ It was the perfect headline for the Sun: crude, defiant, unambiguous and directed at a Frenchman. The paper’s front page on 1 November 1990 called on ‘its patriotic family of readers to tell the filthy French to FROG OFF!’ The tabloid was asking its readers to turn towards France at noon the following
When a nickname really hits its target, there is a satisfying beauty about it: a quippy sobriquet that catches the attention and goes to the heart of some aspect of a person’s character. It is a measure of the Conservative party’s inability to get a convincing hold on Sir Keir Starmer that they have tried
Christmas is a time when those who are closest to each other fight most bitterly. Ireland, which is bringing a legal case against the UK under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), appears to be acting in the spirit of the season. The country’s deputy prime minister Micheál Martin announced yesterday that his government
It’s a pity that Dominic Cummings’s rude WhatsApp messages dominated the headlines following his appearance at the Covid inquiry this week. Boris Johnson’s estranged consigliere had plenty to say about the problems with Whitehall – much of which risks getting ignored because of the focus on leaked messages. One of his targets was the cabinet,
Is there really room in the crowded market for a new podcast about politics, presented by two male Oxbridge graduates? The BBC thinks so: the team behind Radio 4’s Today programme is launching a new weekly podcast hosted by Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan. This is a ‘bold commitment from the BBC to continue to
