Make no mistake, the debt-fuelled, something-for-nothing politics of the current era cannot go on forever. When, inevitably, it does stop, the Conservative Party must be ready.
Wars do not always begin because somebody wanted one. Sometimes somebody simply makes one mistake too many. And if Putin does that and we’d always expect our nation to respond to protect us what looks like a budget decision in Whitehall today could cost British lives tomorrow.
Putin probably hopes his new missiles will be silver bullets. There will be no realistic peace until next Spring or Summer, and only if Russia is successful on the battlefield. Ukraine will be a winter, but it’s difficult to see it being broken. Putin is increasingly inclined to hit Western targets, but he’s not there, quite yet.
Defence operates on many levels. The government takes care of the biggest threats and logistics; individuals take responsibility for themselves; but together we can fill the gap between them. As governments rush to ready us for the next crisis, they should spend at least as much effort readying themselves for us.
Much like the bottom set PE kid you never really wanted on your team, she has fallen at every hurdle – and yet she has somehow still ended up in Badenoch’s innermost sanctum.
Victory must therefore mean more than military success. It must mean rebuilding Ukraine as a confident democracy, supporting justice through lawful international institutions, encouraging a more democratic future for Russia, strengthening Europe’s collective security, and ensuring that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.
Momentum is giving way to scrutiny. Authority giving way to ridicule. Simplicity giving way to the hard realities of governing. The questions are multiplying, and each one makes the next harder to answer. It’s not the end of Reform UK but the moment its trajectory first began to bend.
The Russian state is – probably – heading towards a reckoning. But it is a fool’s errant to predict when and where that might be, or what it may look like.
Britain needs a force capable of mobilising, replenishing, absorbing losses, protecting the homeland, operating with NATO in Europe, and sustaining advanced cyber, space and undersea operations. Anything less is another declaratory review.
It’s no secret that Ukraine’s future depends very much on the degree to which avowed allies are willing to help. So keeping track of opinions about the war helps recognise both positive and negative trends.
It would be naïve to dismiss Russia as a spent force. It would be equally foolish to put Ukraine’s victories on the battlefield down to advances in technology alone. Its success has been driven by its people. It is adaptability, determination and raw courage that have given Ukraine its edge.
What began life as, at best, a noble objective and at worst, a piece of virtue signalling with little thought as to the eventual cost, has not only become a destroyer of jobs and industry, but it’s now also directly impacting on our foreign and defence policy
Soldiers are beginning to take a back seat and instead control the robots and the systems that do the fighting. In the Ukraine war, we are witnessing the rise of the machines – and machine learning. Ground warfare will not be the same.
Lord Ashcroft sits down with one of Ukraine’s most prominent voices – its former foreign minister and now a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, Dmytro Kuleba – to discuss the trajectory of the war, the limits of diplomacy, and what lies ahead.
Successful transition to civilian life at the end of military service helps recruitment, overcomes the perception of being damaged and dumped, and investment pays dividends but we have not really got there yet. But the Ukrainians, in the middle of a brutal war recognise its importance and have outrun us.