The UK lacks the leaders and the defences to deal with an attack from its enemies and see off the threat of a war, a former defence minister has warned.
Tobias Ellwood raised questions about UK defence standards by disclosing he had flown a light aircraft directly over the Royal Navy’s two large aircraft carriers docked in Portsmouth without being challenged.
In a speech to the Royal United Services Institute think tank he decried the lack of leadership in Britain capable of dealing with a crisis that could escalate to war. He did not criticise any particular UK politician.
In his speech, Great Power Diplomacy – How to Avoid World War Three, he warned the dangers facing Britain were becoming harder to dismiss.
After Ukraine used advanced UK drones to attack Russia this week, Moscow has raised the prospect of retaliating, making the possibility of a direct attack seem more distinct.
Mr Ellwood, who also served as a minister in the Foreign Office, said Britain had spent three decades enjoying relative peace since the Cold War, but the assumption that conflict only happened elsewhere was becoming increasingly untenable.
“It’s already here,” the former Conservative MP warned, pointing to Russian naval activity in the Channel, threats to undersea cables and weaknesses in Britain’s air defences.
Mr Ellwood, who has a private pilot’s licence, flew above the key naval base of Portsmouth on a whim, “right over the two aircraft carriers at 1,000 feet”.
He was astonished that he was allowed to do so, arguing that “there is no air defence protecting Portsmouth” and that Britain was “absolutely in that deniable place of thinking that war is not heading our way”. The UK Ministry of Defence has been approached for comment.
The Royal Navy has repeatedly had to shadow Russian warships and tankers sailing through the English Channel, underlining the growing military pressure close to Britain's shores.
Mr Ellwood said these developments should not be viewed in isolation, with Iran and Russia conducting hostile operations against people on British soil.
His warning also comes amid increasing pressure from Washington to spend more on defence. The Labour government has committed to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2027 and set an ambition to reach 3 per cent when economic conditions allow, but there are calls for this to happen sooner.
Mr Ellwood, whose book Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three was published last month, argued that Britain could not wait for those longer-term commitments to happen.
But it was as much a shortage of strategic thinking as depleted armed forces that could spell trouble, he said.
“We are increasingly lacking the strategic leadership required to help navigate us through this new era of insecurity,” he said. He warned that Britain was failing to produce the politicians of sufficient stature to deal with an increasingly dangerous international environment.
“Who would step forward to be a member of parliament today? We need to ask that question because the great and the good will not be counted, will not step forward into the public life.”
Mr Ellwood was particularly critical of the populist politics shaping the international system. He said US President Donald Trump had “actually written off any prospect of trying to repair the global order”, instead seeing “a jungle with big beasts” in which the US, Russia and China carve out their own spheres of influence.
He described the approach as potentially “great for the short term, but very, very dangerous for the long term”.
He worried that the West would respond only after a major crisis. “I do fear it may take a major attack and acute events for the penny to drop,” he said. “So this requires bold leadership. It requires statecraft.
“History is unforgiving for those who drift,” he said. Britain must rebuild its alliances, consider national service and prepare for how wars will be fought in the future.
“The choice is not just between peace and conflict,” Mr Ellwood said. “It’s between shaping the next order or inheriting one imposed by our adversaries.”
