Britain is not just failing to spend enough on defence. We are spending it on the wrong things

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There are resignations that matter for the Westminster soap opera, and then there are resignations that should make the country sit up and pay attention.

The Defence Secretary quitting over the Defence Investment Plan is one of them. So is Al Carns walking out of government soon after. Carns is not some random minister looking for a headline. He is a highly decorated former special forces officer, a former SBS commando, and until now he was the Armed Forces Minister.

When someone like that says the Defence Investment Plan is not good enough, we should probably listen.

This is not just another row about Treasury spreadsheets. It is not just about whether the Ministry of Defence gets a bit more money here or a slightly better settlement there. It is much bigger than that.

Britain has a defence problem. A serious one. And the most worrying part is not simply that we are failing to spend enough. It is that even when we do spend money, we seem determined to spend too much of it on the wrong things.

Speaking to my colleague Nick Ferrari earlier today on LBC, Carns put it clearly. Finding the money, he said, is an issue for the Prime Minister. But he also said we need an honest discussion with the public about where that money comes from, and that the defence system itself must make sure the Defence Investment Plan learns the lessons from Ukraine.

His warning was simple, Britain has to be ready to fight the next war, not the last one. That sentence should be translated to Latin and nailed to the door of the Ministry of Defence.

Because since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, we have been reporting on this almost constantly, defence experts and innovators have been calling for modernisation and flexibility in the procurement process.

We have seen drones turn the battlefield transparent. We have seen cheap FPV systems destroy equipment worth millions. We have seen artillery shortages, ammunition stockpiles, electronic warfare, air defence gaps and battlefield adaptation become the difference between survival and failure.

This has been happening in front of us, day after day, for more than four years. It has been filmed, analysed, briefed, reported and discussed endlessly. Ukrainian soldiers have shown the world what modern war now looks like, and they have done it in brutal detail.

So it is genuinely hard to understand how the Ministry of Defence can still appear so slow to absorb the lesson.

This is not a secret. It is not some classified insight available only to people behind a locked door in Whitehall. Anyone watching Ukraine........

© LBC