Thin Pinstriped Line

  The British Government will be donating 14 Challenger 2 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) to Ukraine to assist in the ongoing fight against Russian fascist invaders. This is the latest donation by the UK and forms part of a wider package likely to also include AS90 howitzers. Over the past year, there has been an enormous influx of military support from Britain to Ukraine, arguably second only to the USA in terms of mass and capability. It has made a significant difference in the ability of Ukraine to defend against Russian hostility and help turn the battle around, and will, in time, likely help play a part in their well deserved victory against the unspeakable evil that is the Russian armed forces.   To deliver this support has come at a price of both stockpiles, vehicles and financial support to Ukraine, reducing British (and wider NATO) holdings as they send more support to the front line. In the short term this will make a real difference, but it comes at the price of drawing ...

As the new year dawns, and the third British Prime Minister in four months tries to grapple with an ever expanding and complex in-tray, questions are being asked about where the UK’s national security priorities should lie. The invasion of Ukraine, now almost a year ago, has led to calls for a reappraisal of British defence policy and priorities, and another look at the findings of the Integrated Review, published in 2021, which heralded a wider strategic shift by the UK back towards the Indo-Pacific, the so-called ‘tilt’ about which much has been written.   There is a growing number of articles suggesting that the tilt is a fantasy and that British national security objectives are best served by refocusing on Europe at the cost of other commitments. The purpose of this article is to roundly rebuff such views. The arguments against the tilt focus on a couple of main concepts, which were illustrated in this early January article which put forward that the UK should abandon the re...

  As the new year dawns, some media organisations continue to cling to long outdated nonsensical stories as a way of demonising the MOD and Civil Service. The latest nonsense emerged this week where in the space of one day the MOD was demonised for wasting money by spending on hire cars and the Civil Service was attacked for saving money by selling off offices. In Daily Mail land, its possible to believe two mutually opposed concepts as bad simultaneously… In the case of the hire car the scandal is that the MOD has spent around £16m on hire cars in the last 12 months under the Project Phoenix contract. This was last a ‘scandal’ in Dec 2021, so like a phoenix rising annually from the ashes, clearly its time to be outraged again. The essence of the story is that the MOD apparently spent £16m on hire cars and about £1m on taxis.   This is the ideal amount of money to be angry about – big enough that its beyond the remit of most people to ever be affordable, but small enough to...