A warning about Putin
The weekend's story is the darkest of the premiership so far: John Bew — former Downing Street chief policy adviser — has warned that Burnham could face an "international military crisis" with Putin within weeks. The shape of the threat isn't tanks; it's the grey zone — Patrick Mercer points at this week's drone attack on Leipzig airport and asks bluntly how long before something similar is mounted against Britain, noting MI6's effectiveness against Russia and the Ukrainian defence firms now relocated here have made the UK a priority target. The accompanying criticism: Burnham has shown "no more intention of improving the sorry state of our forces than his predecessor" — which stings more because he refused to put a date on 3% of GDP just two Sundays ago. Four days out, Clacton suddenly feels very small.
With the warning's logic, entirely. Hybrid escalation against the UK is not a tail risk; it's the obvious next move for an adversary who prefers deniable damage to declared war. Airports, subsea cables, grid substations — the target list writes itself, and pretending otherwise because the polls are good would be negligence.
With the response posture — both the government's and, partly, the critics'. The critics' reflex is "spend more on the forces," but a drone swarm over Heathrow is not deterred by a 2035 GDP percentage; it's deterred by counter-drone systems installed this autumn, cable-monitoring ships at sea this quarter, and grid operators drilled this month. Resilience is cheaper than rearmament and faster than both. Burnham's actual error isn't underspending — it's that his defence posture consists entirely of a contested future number, with nothing published about present readiness. When the threat is weeks away, the plan must be too.
Convened the emergency committee and — the parallel innovation — published an unclassified summary the same afternoon: counter-drone defences accelerated at major airports, subsea cable monitoring expanded, grid cyber-hardening moved up the schedule it was already on thanks to Mission 2's rebuild (Missions 2 & 4). Clarified the constitutional line in the Glass Box: military force still requires a Commons vote — no exceptions, including for me especially — but hybrid defence is an executive duty that waits for no division bell. Commissioned a 30-day defence readiness audit with public reporting, because "sorry state of our forces" should be a measured claim, not a vibe. And published the defence spending path in the ledger: funded, dated, no decade-away GDP percentages — the neighbours pledge 3.5% by 2035; I'd rather show you what's bought by 2027.
sober twice in one fortnight. A government that publishes everything spent today deciding what, for the first time, it must briefly withhold — the Veto Council reviewed the classified annexe on the public's behalf, which is exactly what it's for. Even a glass box needs one opaque drawer. The rule is: the Council always sees inside it.
Next dispatch: tomorrow, 6pm.