Good morning. The government’s strategic defence review was launched on Monday and billed as a blueprint to modernise the military so that, in the words of Keir Starmer, the UK is “safer and stronger, a battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities”.
Reviews like this one come along every decade or so – but the context now appears more urgent than at any time since the end of the cold war. In the place of the old consensus that the UK simply needed to be ready for (deeply questionable) deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan is a view that the threats now are much closer to home, and much closer to existential. “UK armed forces have begun the necessary process of change in response to this new reality,” the review said. “But progress has not been fast or radical enough.”
