When John Healey was asked, on stage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were ‘ready’ for war, the Defence Secretary replied: ‘Yes.’ One of those present says: ‘That was greeted with near incredulity in the room.’ Another attendee compared Healey’s plight to someone ‘playing French cricket’, with critics from all sides hurling balls at his ankles while he tried to bat them away. ‘You can’t score any runs in French cricket.’

George Robertson, Healey’s most respected Labour predecessor and a former secretary general of Nato, was not present; he was in Scotland celebrating his 80th birthday. But he returned to give a withering interview to the FT and a speech. Having co-written the government’s strategic defence review, he warned that, because of the government’s ‘corrosive complacency’ over defence spending, Britain was ‘not safe’.

While Keir Starmer is congratulated by his MPs for opposing Donald Trump’s war on Iran, defence chiefs, various ministers and leading figures in the defence industries think the government is failing at a moment of existential crisis for national security. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP), due last autumn, is still in flux; insiders say that Starmer has ‘given the DIP to the Treasury’, which one called ‘an act of national suicide’.

Multiple sources say Downing Street is gearing up to find more money for defence after May’s local elections, but as a former Starmer aide put it: ‘No one seems to have told George [Robertson], which is stupid.’ Two insiders say officials have ‘pencilled in’ 28 June to publish the DIP, but one added: ‘People writing the submissions say it’s still a mess with no direction.’ That timing makes sense, since it is just before the Nato summit in Ankara. Others point out that the G7 summit in Evian begins on 15 June, when Starmer is likely to get a fresh pounding from Trump.

A senior defence source........

© The Spectator