Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2026. © Richard Kemp

Is Keir Starmer about to throw a hand grenade into the enemy camp? By ‘enemy’ I mean whoever succeeds him as Prime Minister. Starmer reportedly intends to publish his grossly inadequate Defence Investment Plan before his successor is even nominated, thus handing a fait accompli to the new PM which will then have to be accepted or somehow unravelled.

Not only that but Starmer currently intends to present the DIP at the Nato summit in Ankara on 7 July, which will make this country a laughing-stock among our allies. That much has been signalled already by Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who warned that Britain risks global irrelevance unless it properly funds defence and meets Nato spending commitments. He said recently ‘when push comes to shove, you either have the ships to send to the Gulf or the brigades to deploy to Ukraine, or you don’t’. Right now we don’t, and under Starmer’s DIP we won’t.

Worse still, our opponents including Russia and China will be encouraged by Britain’s humiliation and, by extension, that of Nato as well. One of Starmer’s final acts as Prime Minister is set to endanger our country and the Western alliance.

The DIP is the blueprint for funding Britain’s defence commitments for the next decade. It is far from sufficient to meet the requirements of the recent strategic defence review and two of Starmer’s own defence ministers have resigned because they recognise exactly that. John Healey, the Defence Secretary until a couple of weeks ago, said it “falls well short of what is required for defence” and fails our armed forces. Basically, the DIP offers a staggering £8 billion less than the £18 billion of extra funding that Healey considered the bare minimum he needed over the next four years.

Under the stiletto heel of Chancellor Rachel Reeves, and with a party behind him which refuses to contemplate economies in pursuit of its the holy grails – welfare spending and net zero – Starmer lacked the authority to beef up our defences. That means paralysis for the armed forces: reduced readiness, not enough people, insufficient training, equipment that cannot meet the demands of the modern battlefield and gross deficiencies in munitions stocks. All of this at a time when warfare is evolving at a terrifying and unprecedented rate, driven by new technologies – not least the explosion in air, sea and ground drones and space weapons.

The defence ministers’ resignations pushed an already deeply troubled premiership into a full-blown leadership crisis that led quickly to Starmer stepping down. Under those circumstances, his successor will have no choice than to reconsider the DIP. It won’t be easy because he will be leading the same party with the same priorities. But a stronger and more talented leader – if one emerges – may be able to change the equation, conceivably by ridding himself of the current Chancellor and the current, totally uncontrollable Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The damage has already been done by Starmer. But why make it even worse by publishing the DIP now and forcing his replacement into a very public U-turn, if indeed he has the courage and aptitude to do so? Much better for the credibility of this country to hold back and let the new PM make the call.

Nato will of course expect to hear about Britain’s defence plans on 7 July but would understand that the leadership election got in the way. That would at least be damage limitation even if personally humiliating for Starmer.

Whatever he does now he can expect excoriation from President Trump, who will be scrutinising member states’ plans for achieving their Nato financial commitments. Perhaps it will be better for him on this occasion to be accused of equivocation rather than deliberately sabotaging his own country’s defences.

Article published in The Daily Mail, 15 June 2026. © Richard Kemp

Too little, too late. I’m afraid that was my instinct­ive response to news that a Rus­sian shadow fleet oil tanker had been boarded in the Chan­nel.

In an undoubtedly dar­ing six-hour oper­a­tion, Royal Mar­ine com­mandos took con­trol of the ves­sel Smyr­tos, one of hun­dreds of tankers used to trans­port Rus­sian oil and help fund Vladi­mir Putin’s war machine.

Little won­der, then, that Sir Keir Starmer was eager to trum­pet the mis­sion’s tri­umph. ‘This suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion deliv­ers yet another blow to Rus­sia and reminds those fuel­ling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide,’ he crowed on X.

Well, as a 30-year mil­it­ary vet­eran who also headed the Inter­na­tional Ter­ror­ism Intel­li­gence Team in the Cab­inet Office, this smacks less of a mean­ing­ful stra­tegic blow against Rus­sia than a belea­guered PM attempt­ing – if you’ll excuse the pun – to shore up his own defences.

Let us not for­get that Sir Keir first announced plans to crack down on Rus­sia’s shadow fleet back in March.

Yet accord­ing to Gov­ern­ment fig­ures, 184 shadow fleet ves­sels trans­ited Brit­ish waters between March and May without con­sequence.

Why, then, act now? You do not need to be a cynic to observe that this dra­matic inter­ven­tion has arrived at a par­tic­u­larly sens­it­ive moment for a Prime Min­is­ter.

Last week, his Defence Sec­ret­ary John Healey resigned, warn­ing that mil­it­ary spend­ing ‘falls well short’ of what is required to pro­tect Bri­tain.

HEALEY was fol­lowed by Armed Forces min­is­ter Al Carns, who said the defence invest­ment plans were not ‘suf­fi­ciently fun­ded’. Given those extraordin­ary ver­dicts, Sir Keir may well believe a dis­play of mil­it­ary resolve will help strengthen his pos­i­tion as ques­tions about his lead­er­ship grow ever louder.

Then there is the small mat­ter of the G7 sum­mit this week and the Nato gath­er­ing in July. Neither could come at a worse time for a PM des­per­ate to project author­ity on the world stage while avoid­ing the pro­spect of embar­rass­ment along­side an unpre­dict­able Don­ald Trump.

Let us not for­get the Pres­id­ent has already denounced Sir Keir as ‘not Win­ston Churchill’ after his refusal to per­mit the use of UK bases for the ini­tial US-Israel strikes on Iran. Against this back­drop, does this not look sus­pi­ciously like polit­ical pos­tur­ing? For when lead­ers find them­selves under pres­sure, the old­est trick in the book is to redir­ect atten­tion else­where and hope voters mis­take activ­ity for achieve­ment.

The uncom­fort­able truth is that, for all Sir Keir’s bravado, what unfol­ded in the Chan­nel was hardly the D-Day land­ings.

ANY board­ing oper­a­tion at sea car­ries risks, and I have noth­ing but respect for those who car­ried it out. But in mil­it­ary terms it was a lim­ited tac­tical action, not a decis­ive turn­ing point in the con­flict. Non­ethe­less, even lim­ited actions can carry con­sequences.

Is Sir Keir pre­pared for how Putin might respond? The Rus­sian leader is not known for quietly absorb­ing per­ceived set­backs.

More broadly, the oper­a­tion high­lights a recur­ring prob­lem with this Gov­ern­ment: a pref­er­ence for grand rhet­oric over sus­tained action.

When Sir Keir came to power in 2024 he spoke of a ‘cast iron com­mit­ment’ to increas­ing defence spend­ing to 2.5 per cent of national income.

Yet the Armed Forces con­tinue to face severe cap­ab­il­ity chal­lenges after years of under­in­vest­ment.

Which brings us back to the Defence Invest­ment Plan. For a Defence Sec­ret­ary to resign on the grounds mil­it­ary fund­ing is inad­equate is extraordin­ary. For an Armed Forces min­is­ter to fol­low him out of the door say­ing much the same thing is more extraordin­ary still.

What this demon­strates is that neither Sir Keir nor much of his wider party appear to grasp the scale of the threat Bri­tain faces – and that is not merely my view, either.

In April, George Robertson, one of the authors of the Stra­tegic Defence Review, con­demned the ‘cor­ros­ive com­pla­cency’ in the Gov­ern­ment’s approach to defence.

Sadly, those two words alone tell us far more about the true state of Bri­tain’s secur­ity than any sup­posedly dev­ast­at­ing ‘blow’ Sir Keir claims to have struck against Rus­sia.

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 June 2026. © Richard Kemp

Dan Jarvis should not have agreed to become Defence Secretary given the proposed spending level in the inaptly named Defence Investment Plan.

Why did Jarvis, a former officer of the Parachute Regiment, agree to drink from Starmer’s poisoned chalice? He may have told himself that he was stepping up for his country at a time of danger. But it is actually more of a betrayal, giving apparent professional legitimacy to a Defence Investment Plan that puts our country into great danger – as John Healey made clear in his resignation letter.

Jarvis should have turned the job down, as should all other former-military MPs, who ought to understand defence better than the plethora of PPE students, former special advisers, DEI fanatics and political apparatchiks that warm so many of the green benches in the Commons. Ex-military MPs, more than civilians, should understand the gravity of the situation. They have a duty to press Starmer into increasing the planned defence budget. The same applies to the service chiefs of staff who should not be willing to preside over a plan that will endanger their men and make their country more vulnerable. Healey has made it clear: Starmer’s plan would make the country less safe, reduce the readiness of the Armed Forces and increase the risk to forces in battle.

Starmer will no doubt have calculated that a former soldier will steady the military ship, with many of our troops (he hopes) believing Jarvis will rise above politics and work in their interests. The same thinking will have been applied to wider public opinion: if a distinguished ex-serviceman is willing to take on this office and back the Defence Investment Plan that John Healey and armed forces minister Al Carns both resigned over, then it can’t actually be as bad as Healey said.

Having said all that, it may be that no amount of pressure would divert Starmer from his current retrograde path. Despite his big words about leading a ‘coalition of the willing’ for Ukraine and playing a key role in safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz (in both cases of course, after hostilities have ended), he is not willing to put our money where his mouth is. Starmer said only last week that our intelligence services assess we could face an attack by Russia as early as 2030. He obviously doesn’t believe that and neither does his party. The real threat, in their view, is global warming or climate change, or whatever the latest buzzword is. That is why Starmer prioritises Ed Miliband’s obsessive pursuit of net zero over defence.

Then there is party management in the face of a looming leadership challenge. Starmer may have calculated that, however serious, the loss of Healey would be less damaging among back benchers than the loss of Miliband, who reportedly refused point blank to give up any of his costly net zero budget to help fund defence. This is yet another example of Starmer putting his own political survival ahead of the national interest, as we saw earlier this year in Starmer’s willingness to alienate President Trump over Middle East policy. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Express, 6 April 2026. © Richard Kemp

No other country could have pulled off a rescue operation of this magnitude, complexity and danger. The first rescue was relatively straightforward, with emphasis on the word relatively, because every such mission in enemy territory is highly dangerous, for both the downed airmen and those trying to save them. The pilot was brought out in just a few hours, with designated US search and rescue forces already in the area standing by to react.

For his crewman, a colonel, it was a different story; he had landed separately from the pilot and was harder to get to. I have been involved in hostage rescue operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and although the scenarios were different, all such endeavours share two hugely demanding challenges: precise location of the subject and time.

This was very much a race against time. As every minute ticked by, the likelihood of the enemy reaching him before the Americans increased exponentially. Once the Iranians knew they potentially had a US pilot in their clutches, they went all out to get their hands on him, crashing out military forces and militias and even mobilising local civilians with promise of a bounty.

No doubt the Americans planned to retrieve their man by force had the Iranians got to him first but that would have been an even more hazardous mission.

To minimise the likelihood of that, the Americans had immediately thrown into place several different operational tracks at the same time, all pre-prepared for this eventuality. In that they were aided by the Israelis, both in intelligence and firepower. Sophisticated deception was mounted against the Iranians to throw them off the track while obscuring their own rescue plans. Concurrently they put into action the most advanced geo-location tools known to man, including cyber and space capability. The challenge of maintaining their fix on the colonel as he moved to evade the Iranians was particularly great in the mountainous terrain of southern Iran.

Meanwhile the rescue package was deployed, including dozens of aircraft and hundreds of special forces operatives. They opened fire on Iranian troops heading towards the airman. They had back-ups for back-ups and when two transport aircraft were stranded in Iranian territory they destroyed them on the ground to prevent them falling into enemy hands and sent in replacements.

The immense military skill, coordination and technological power speak for themselves. As does the tremendous courage of the rescue force pilots and ground troops who willingly threw themselves into a potential death trap.

The stakes could not have been higher — on top of saving two American lives. Reeling from the political and military destruction they have suffered for the past few weeks, the Iranians would have done all in their malignant power to capitalise on the captured airmen. They would have been paraded publicly, most likely tortured into making video statements confessing to ‘war crimes’ and put  on trial. We would have had a full-blown hostage crisis, with the regime making sure the airmens’ plight was kept in the headlines for as long as they were held. Growing concessions would have been demanded from President Trump who would have come under increasing domestic political pressure from those opposed to this war.

The timing was critical, with Trump’s deadline for the Iranians to reach a deal looming fast. The last thing he needed was leverage of this kind in Tehran’s hands. He will no doubt be as grateful for the success of this unprecedented mission as will the downed airmen, their families and comrades.

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2026. © Richard Kemp

Iran’s entire defensive strategy has been upended by the current campaign. The ayatollahs never expected to find themselves in a sustained, direct, high-intensity war with the US and Israel. Their thinking had been based on gaining ascendancy in the Middle East by proxy groups and ultimately by nuclear weapons.

The rulers of Iran spent billions of dollars building a series of terrorist networks that would do their dirty work for them both for offensive action and defence. They expected retaliation against their belligerence would be limited to containable clandestine operations and cyber attacks, as they had experienced for many years.

But had they come under direct attack from either the US or Israel, they had some not-so-secret weapons up their sleeves: Hezbollah, Hamas and – very much in third place – the Houthis. These groups would simultaneously bombard Israel with many thousands of missiles, overwhelming IDF air defences and inflicting intolerable damage. That would have forced the US to back down in traditional fashion.

It didn’t work out like that. All three terror proxies have been very severely handled by Israel (and in the case of the Houthis, the US) since the brutal and ill-judged Hamas offensive on October 7, 2023. Their combined contribution to the defence of Iran over the last few weeks has consequently been strategically negligible.

So when the war came to Iranian territory, the ayatollahs had to find another way of making the US back down. That wouldn’t be achieved by striking Israel alone: the 12-day war last June showed that Israel is able to bat off most of the missiles and drones and in any case would never have stopped fighting or appealed to the US to do so.

But in the minds of the ayatollahs, attacking their Arab neighbours would achieve what they wanted. Fearing political and economic instability, the Gulf states would pressure Trump to call off the war.

In fact it had the opposite effect. Behind the scenes, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly urged the president to keep attacking until the job is done. Whatever they might say in public, the Arab states’ true position can be seen by the continued US use of bases in the region.

Indeed, Iran’s actions have further underscored a threat that Arab countries long feared, and consequently increased their reliance on protection from the US and Israel, especially in intelligence and air defence. Even those states that had long sought to stay neutral, such as Qatar and the UAE, both previously acting as mediators, have been forced to pick sides. A strategy that was meant to divide has instead consolidated opposition to Tehran.

Another strategic miscalculation has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As a global economic attack, it gives further justification for the US and Israel to continue the war, including potentially widening strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. It also reinforces the narrative that Iran is a worldwide threat and Continue reading →