Is Britain 'battle-ready'?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

Today the government has published the long-awaited strategic defence review. The brief was to take a new look at some of the challenges to the UK in 2025, and what is needed to ensure our security and reset our defence priorities.

We are still waiting for some of the detail, but so far we know: £15 billion for new warheads to be carried by the new Dreadnought-class submarines; a dozen new SSN-Aukus attack submarines; £1.5 billion to build at least six munitions' factories; £6 billion to procure munitions over the remainder of this parliament; and £1 billion for digital capability and a new CyberEM Command. Where is all that money coming from?

Most of the squabbling today has been over the commitment to 3 per cent of GDP on defence spending. Labour have so far only gone as far as to say that’s an ‘ambition’. But are Labour being ambitious enough? Is the UK still a global player when it comes to defence if we can't commit to 3 per cent?

Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Emma Salisbury, research fellow at the Council on Geostrategy.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:46.0	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oscar Edmonton.
0:51.5	I'm joined today by James Heel and Emma Salisbury, who is the C-Power Research Fellow at the Council of Geo Strategy.
0:58.8	Now, today the government is publishing the long-awaited Strategic Defence Review.
1:03.5	We have been waiting all day to find out exactly what's going to be in it, but John Healy and Keir-Sarmor clearly have no regard for podcasters,
1:11.5	although John Healy is probably speaking just as this podcast airs.
1:15.0	So in lieu of being able to hear from him, let's hear a little bit from Kirstama earlier in the day.
1:20.2	First, we are moving to warfighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces. When we are being directly threatened by states
1:31.1	with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready. And frankly,
1:39.8	to show them that we're ready, to deliver peace through strength.
1:46.1	Now, Emma, strong language there from the PM, seemingly putting us on a war footing,
1:51.0	and we'll unpick whether that actually is the case in this podcast.
1:54.6	But can we start by getting a little bit of background first on this strategic defence review,
1:59.7	what we've been promised and for how long they've
2:02.0	been promising it? Well, strategic defence reviews in their various guises are a good way for
	...

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