Ultimately, we should remember a simple lesson: in poker terms, we still have a one of the best hands of any nation, we just need to play it better.
Our independent schools are the cornerstone of an internationally respected schooling system. If we continue to treat our educational heritage as expendable, then we risk losing more than just historic buildings. We risk losing sovereignty over how our children are educated.
The current defence budget is £62.2bn. Our figure, £70.3bn, is merely the estimate for being able to stay in the next big fight for more than a week – and, more immediately, for looking like a sufficiently serious threat for a peer or near-peer power not to chance their hand and start it.
Right now the big question is how to tackle the poor performance of the British economy and the reasons behind it. Not all are Brexit related, but it’s important to address those that are. We aren’t going back in, but we should still investigate, for our own good, the Brexit effect.
The relationship between development and security is at the heart of promoting British interests abroad. Strategic engagement overseas is not an alternative to advancing Britain’s national interest – it is an essential part of it.
It is not simply the departure of a minister. It is a warning that, at a moment when Britain requires greater urgency, resilience and strategic direction, this government appears increasingly unable—or unwilling—to provide them.
China, India and the United States are exploiting their domestic energy advantages to support economic growth and industrial competitiveness. Britain should do the same.
Labour wants us to believe nationalisation is a superior way of running a business. This Scunthorpe scandal shows just how much taxpayers money you can lose and put at risk by not agreeing public control with prior owners, and not having a realistic business plan.
Government waffle-eeze aside, the principle is a simple one. Coordinating our tools of power will deliver more power and more influence, drive strategic thinking to make the Foreign Office more effective and our undisputed intellectual driver of global engagement.
We currently live in a never-never land of promised defence spending that doesn’t then materialise. Our Government is talking the talk on defence and resilience. It is not walking the walk.
Space is exciting science. It is bold human exploration. But it is also a crucial environment for complex geo-political rivalries too. Artemis II was a model of international collaboration very different from the MAGA rhetoric. Even America now is not trying to do it all on its own.
Nobody can predict how long the current Iran oil price spike will last but one thing is certain: future global uncertainty.
This government of international lawyers, by international lawyers for international lawyers has used its own skewed and incompetent interpretations of human rights, net zero, post-colonial settlements and other international treaties to sell us out and weaken our security.
China’s proposed embassy is about far more than one building in London; it is a test of whether Britain has fully grasped the nature of the challenge before us. We should be confident enough to engage with China but clear-eyed enough to recognise when our security, sovereignty, and the promise we made to Hongkongers regarding safe refuge without intimidation, are at risk.