‘FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP’ SHOWN IN GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE TO DEFENCE, SAYS FORMER HEAD OF THE ARMY

THERE has been a “failure of leadership” in government towards national defence, according to General Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the Army.

He was commenting on a claim from former defence minister James Heappey that only the MoD participated in a recent major exercise to test how the country would be governed in a wartime emergency.

Lord Dannatt told GB News: “He perfectly reasonably said that this actually indicated that we’re not taking these things seriously.

“We should be worried if the Government didn’t respond to these criticisms and didn’t rise to the challenge. What this needs currently, without being unreasonable about it – it shows a failure of leadership.”

In a discussion during Breakfast with Isabel Webster and Tom Harwood, he continued: “If you look at the worst outcome of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, if Russia should prevail against Ukraine, and then Russia should push against other NATO countries, we could find ourselves in a very serious set of circumstances here in this country.

“What it needs is for Number 10, the Prime Minister of the day, to absolutely crack the whip across government…we need to increase our spending on our defence, and that means increasing the defence budget from 2.2%, through to 2.5%, to 3% [of GDP].

“Some would even say, and I would echo that, going up to 4%, which is where we were in the Cold War, to make sure that we are properly looking after the defence and the infrastructure of this country, to make sure that we can look after the people of this country should the worst come to the worst.”

He added: ”The reason why the Cold War never turned hot was because we increased our defence capability, both nuclear and conventional capability, particularly during the 1980s…to the point that the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact realised that they couldn’t compete and indeed the Cold War ended satisfactorily.”