New DefSec Dan Jarvis might have to live with the budget total Healey and Carns couldn’t accept. But he must rewrite the Defence Investment Plan to transform defence and make the tough choices we need. / 1
Mark Sedwill
@marksedwill
Jun 1
NATO as a protected enterprise is finished. US won’t keep the sea lanes open alone. Britain’s answer is expeditionary forces — anchoring NATO’s northern flank and reaching the Gulf and Indo-Pacific. My latest @spectator: spectator.co.uk/article/mini…

Jun 12, 2026 · 9:25 AM UTC

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Replying to @marksedwill
If the ministers can’t give the Chiefs what they need to do their jobs then the Chiefs need to make a statement saying just that - else they are complicit in the inevitable cuts and the danger this puts our country in - will you stand up and be counted @UKCDS_MOD or will you hide - one is moral courage - the other moral cowardice
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Replying to @marksedwill @LaurenMaeve
So let’s dump GCAP and CSAD But of course, politicians won’t allow it and so we’ll crawl on with grotesquely inadequate forces
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Replying to @marksedwill
Rewrite the DIP to fit the money available? My concern is over-reliance on immature unmanned tech as a way to square the funding circle, with a too-binary "unmanned good, conventional bad" approach. The war we fight next won't be the same as the one Ukraine is experiencing today
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Replying to @marksedwill
We aren't short if money, if we stop giving billions in Aid to countries that have better armies them we have, and are better off then we are
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Replying to @marksedwill
The reality is Jarvis is only going to be Defence Secretary as long as Starmer is PM. The next Defence Secretary after him will have the job of renegotiating DIP.
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Replying to @marksedwill
A Commando Brigade might be really useful in that context.
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Replying to @marksedwill
If he has principles he should resign. If he can can live with what Healey/Carns resigned over then he is only out for personal gain not the defence of our country.
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Replying to @marksedwill
Not if there’s a new PM in the coming months.
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Replying to @marksedwill
Or he could honorably resign.
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Replying to @marksedwill
If defence has to live within the budget cap defined in the (mythical) DiP, what commitments is the Govt (@10DowningStreet) going to take off the table ? Less money = less commitments.
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