The Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden has insisted that that former Defence Minister who are former British Army Officers and retired Generals are “wrong” in their professional assessments that we “are not ready to fight.”
Dowden claims that the government are “making good progress against rising threats” to the UK despite Ben Wallace and James Heappey who are former British Army officers saying that Britain is “a very long way behind.”
The two former Defence Secretaries have issued a stern warning to the government that World War Three is rapidly intensifying and that the UK is “not ready.”
Tobias Ellwood who is a Lieutenant Colonel, a former defence minister and chaired the Defence Select Committee has warned the UK will experience some “difficult years ahead.”
Ellwood told Camilla Tominey on GB News there is a “1937 feel to our world now,” he is urging the government to conduct a comprehensive defence review and warned the UK needs to prepare for “some very difficult years ahead.”
Dowden has acknowledged that the world will become “more dangerous as time goes on” amid threats from North Korea, Iran Russia and China.
He was asked about their remarks, Mr Dowden told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, “I think they’re wrong. They’re absolutely right [that] we’re in a more hostile situation than we’ve been in certainly since the end of the Cold War, possibly even before that.
“And we’ve seen threats rise across a range of vectors, not just conventional Armed Forces but cybersecurity and indeed there’s been recent incidents in respect of that, economic security where the Prime Minister has established an economic security committee of the National Security Council, which I chair.
“We are taking action across the board, we’ve set up the National Cyber Security Centre in respect of cyber, I now take dozens of decisions daily about investment to protect our economic security.”
Lord Sedwill, the head of the civil service under Theresa May and Boris Johnson, told Kuenssberg the world faced its “most dangerous period since the end of the Cold War”.
“I think what people are finding overwhelming is not just that but the sheer complexity of the international environment,” he said.
“We have the war in Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza, much less reported conflicts all across sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel, tensions elsewhere, risks around Taiwan, other issues in the Middle East…
“To handle all of that, to deal with climate change, to regulate AI, to deal with all of these other issues that we’re facing, we need the international community to be able to cooperate but we’re at a time of the most acute geopolitical tensions.”
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the Sun, “The UK really needs to catch up. Our conventional deterrence is not up to the mark and we’ve allowed our ability to fight global wars to drift.
“As a tank commander in the First Gulf War, we put an armoured division into the field but we couldn’t even put a third of that into the field today.
“What we’re seeing in Ukraine is that mass is really important. I think ourselves and the other NATO countries in Europe like Germany and France have really got to get our acts together.”
