The last three and a half years have been a wild ride but it’s time to bring back the experts and #MakePoliticsBoringAgain. My piece for City AM this morning.

The threats the UK faces are real and they’re growing. We need to meet this moment. I’m staying on as a defence minister to play my part in getting this right.

Let's clear some of this @hmtreasury confusion up for them. Welfare budget is 330bn. Over 4 years that's 1.4trn. Defence are asking for an 'additional' 28bn *over 4 years* (to cover agreed plans). The Treasury are not run by serious people if they can't find 28 out of 1,400...

If only there were things that existed and cost money beyond schools and hospitals. What a disingenuous and silly line of attack.

This is a fab newsletter. Definitely worth signing up for defence/political friends who want to understand what’s really happening behind the headlines.

"The government's communications strategy has been a complete failure". This article from 2020 wasn't meant to be evergreen... thearticle.com/the-governmen…

A: Hello, I wanted to check why my rubbish wasn’t collected today? B: I’m sorry about that, sir, but I can assure you that we’re working hard to globalise the intifada.

Iconic

@ZackPolanski - this is magnificent. Three things I can’t deny: 1. It is a video. 2. You are wearing a jacket. 3. Then you aren’t. 4. Then you are again. Unfortunately that’s where the accuracy ends. A few corrections for you: Peter Thiel is not our CEO. Alex Karp is — and has been for 20 years. (A lifelong Democrat, for anyone keeping score.) We are not a “spyware company.” Spyware is malware. Malware is illegal. Calling a software company spyware is, technically, defamatory (don’t worry, we are not suing). We don’t build surveillance technology. We build software that helps organisations make sense of data they already hold. Not the same thing. There was no “private tour” of our HQ. There was a public photocall to which the media came. Hence, why there are so many pictures of the event. Our MOD contract is not “the biggest defence contract in UK history.” Ajax armoured vehicles = £5.5bn. Dreadnought submarines = £31bn. We’re grateful for the work, but let’s keep a sense of scale. We have no more access to NHS data than Microsoft has to the contents of your Word documents. I think you know this by now. We don’t have access to patient medical records. Same story. I agree that “nothing matters more than our health.” Which makes it worth reminding you of what Palantir’s software is actually doing in the NHS right now: ->110,000 additional operations ->15% fewer delayed hospital discharges ->7% more patients finding out within 28 days whether they have cancer Respect again for what you did with that jacket.

“As a local councillor I will take the necessary steps to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” Bro your job is to focus on local bin collections

🚨Lord George Robertson - a former Labour defence secretary who wrote the prime minister’s defence review - just made a hugely consequential intervention🚨 He wants to trigger a national conversation on the need for the UK to rebuild its defences. And he wants words by the government about boosting defence spending to become far more urgent and decisive action. Defence also needs to become a cross- party issue as these perilous times mean political point scoring is a luxury we can’t afford. Here are some main points. As well as talking about Sir Keir Starmer’s “corrosive complacency” on defence and that the UK is underprepared for war, Lord George Robertson in his speech: 🚨Directly calls out the prime minister for failing to match his pledges to rearm with the money to make it happen. For example, he notes how the PM wrote in a newspaper article about how the Iran war needs to be a line in the sand for the UK to strengthen its defences but Lord Robertson says “the wherewithal to make all of this happen was absent” 🚨He urges for defence to become an all of country issue, to take the politics out of it and for all political parties to work together. “There is an urgency about the threat which renders political point scoring to be a dangerous luxury”. 🚨He makes a strong case to switch funding away from welfare and into warfare. Lord Robertson says welfare spending is 5x that of defence. “Are we certain that this is the right priority - jeopardising safety and security whilst maintaining an increasingly unsustainable welfare bill?” 🚨He underlines that NATO has said Russia could be ready to use military force against the alliance by the end of the decade - that is just three years away. “That is a very short period of time and it should scare us all”… “That is sobering and frightening by any standard” 🚨He says this call to transform the armed forces is about so much more than investing in more warships and jets. It is about much wider readiness. “We are simply not ready. We need to rebuild our readiness in order to deter and possible adversary. 🚨Deterrence is much cheaper than war. The UK paid off its final debt from World War 2 in 2016 - when it was on the winning side! 🚨Lord Robertson says the government needs to abandon the “lethargic thought process of the post Cold War” era and instead get onto a proper war footing like Ukraine 🚨Finally, Lord Robertson says there has to be a national conversation on defence - something that Sir Keir Starmer said would happen 18 months ago. The public needs to understand the threat and to realise that there will have to be some difficult spending choices made for the UK genuinely to bolster its security in a “very very turbulent world”. 🚨He finishes by saying: “We need the whole country to wake up. The clock is ticking”

Our national security and our economic resilience are directly linked. This government, our Armed Forces and industry are working together to meet the challenge head on. As always, a privilege to be at the @LondonDefConf today👇

News from UK's Cambridge Aerospace which says it will be delivering a 'significant number' of low-cost Skyhammer air defence systems to UK MoD from May. Skyhammer - optimised for counter-Shahed role - has a range of 30km with a top speed of 700km/h #avgeek

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Given the understandable focus this weekend on the UK’s lack of air defences, I’m reposting a link to The Wargame podcast Last April, we simulated a Russian ballistic and cruise missile attack on the UK and how a fictional government COBR might respond podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcas…

people misunderstand the icarus story. the problem was not that he flew too high. it's that the wings were made of beeswax, which offered very little resistance to heating. with modern materials he would have had no problems. we can fly as close to the sun as we want now

Epic work from the whole team at Kraken 💪

Could not agree more… 👀🚀

Barrons not mincing his words!

Britain is in denial on defence Politicians have not prepared the public for a dangerous new era Today's Morning Call, with @georgeeaton newstatesman.com/politics/uk…

Your Security Clearance doesn't make you James Bond; it just means you get to read boring reports that make you question life choices.