When the Defence Secretary John Healey scheduled a speech on reforming the UK’s defence capabilities in the middle of recess, he could not have imagined how perfectly timed it would prove to be. As Europe scrambles to react to President Donald Trump’s rewriting of the geopolitical security order (which Lawrence Freedman writes about for the New Statesman today), Keir Starmer has been mooting the possibility of British troops going to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, a former UK army chief has been warning that our military resources are too run-down to offer any such thing, and a furious debate rages about if, when and how the UK can get defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP – not to mention whether that will be enough.
This might not have been the main topic of the Defence Secretary’s speech yesterday at the Institute for Government, but one can scarcely contemplate a more vivid backdrop. While outlining his reforms, Healey spoke of the need to “rearm Britain” in order to provide “a more muscular defence for a more dangerous world”. Right now in that world, the US is negotiating directly with Russia about the Ukraine war and future aggression across Europe, without the input of either Ukrainian or European leaders. The US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that America is no longer “primarily focused” on European security is already old news.
Content from our partners
