'£28bn hole to fill for Britain to have robust military capability'

UR COUNTRY is skint and Labour’s chronic mismanagement of the economy so far is only making matters worse.

- Duncan Barkes

Additionally, we have an administration that is hellbent on achieving net zero climate target emissions against a backdrop of defence chiefs sounding the alarm bells that our nation is not spending enough on protecting itself and a Chancellor who is resisting calls from the Ministry of Defence for more cash.

The time has come to slaughter the holy cow of net zero in favour of freeing up cash to invest in our future security. In all my years of writing and broadcasting about politics, government departments have always moaned about not having enough money and about having to do more with less.

But the defence of our nation should always be paramount, and it has never been clearer that we live in unpredictable and unprecedented geopolitical times. It is not just Labour who should carry the can for poor defence spending previous Conservative governments could have done much more to ensure our navy, army and air force were fit for the future.

Sadly, as is often the case in modern politics, tough decisions were deferred while our military capability got smaller and weaker. An over-reliance on Nato and the UK/US special relationship also gave many prime ministers a sense of false security when it came to protecting our nation.