Rishi Sunak needs to channel Winston Churchill on national security with threats from China, Russia and Iran
A LITTLE birdie tells me the Tory rebels are still a significant way off the letters needed to trigger a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak.
The threat of a June election — first revealed in this column last week — looms over the party if they even hint at regicide after May 2’s local elections.
But, as things stand, the magic number of 53 is a pipe dream.
While our poll on Pages 8 and 9 today will do little to calm the jitters, the herd has not yet moved . . . even if a few stray bovines are mooing.
Yet the Prime Minister is by no means out of the woods. He’s on course for a pummelling.
Almost half of voters say Sunak does not have a plan for the UK. Whatever plan the PM says he has, it clearly isn’t working.
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So what could he do? The keyboard warriors over at Mumsnet warn the Tories “could get Churchill back and they will still lose”.
But I’m not so sure. A little Churchill spirit might just be what Sunak needs.
They might not win, but they could at least level the playing field a bit and perhaps avoid that predicted wipeout.
In Wag The Dog — a great 90s film released around the time Bill Clinton began his second term — a struggling president brings in a film director to fake a war in Albania in a desperate bid to stem his plummeting ratings.
But Sunak doesn’t need to fake it. War is here.
While not yet hot, relations with Russia and China are at Cold War levels. The menace of Iran is behind rockets and drones that literally rain down on Navy ships in the Red Sea.
Just this week ministers finally admitted the scale of Chinese aggression in the world of cyber, yet some insisted the response was watered down.
Russia, so incensed by our steadfast support — both public and very covert — for Ukraine, even tried to blame Britain for the horrific IS shooting attack in Moscow last week.
Israel is rightly angry and outrageously isolated after left-wing Democrats pulled Joe Biden away from the traditional US support for the only democracy in the Middle East.
Trump is all set to come back and reignite his war of words with lil Rocket Man Kim Jong Un of North Korea.
Food security is under threat
Pakistan and India are never far from a nuclear-armed episode of Neighbours From Hell, while Taiwan is looking dicey.
The list of places where things could go pop is very long. So what is Britain doing?
Well, not very much it seems. What was there for defence in Jeremy Hunt’s Budget? Zilch.
And this is a man who once called for it to be hiked to four per cent of GDP.
Not since the failure to rearm in the 1930s and instead pursue a policy of appeasement against Hitler have our policymakers looked so deluded.
Emptying our stocks to arm Ukraine was the right thing to do, but not massively increasing defence spending to replenish them is insane.
Food security is under threat, your phone’s security is under threat and your family’s security is under threat.
Perhaps there is an election slogan there? Sunak is staring at an opposition leader that wanted to make Jeremy Corbyn the Prime Minister.
A Shadow Foreign Secretary that voted to not replace our nuclear deterrent.
And a party that is riddled with MPs who happily whistle From The River To The Sea about Israel.
As former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace puts it: “Labour hope that Sun readers won’t notice that they are putting us all at risk.
“Their refusal to commit to even current spending levels sweeps the threats we face under the carpet and betrays our security.”
And the answer? “The Conservatives must once again be brave enough to pick up the baton for defence of the realm.”
His comments are echoed by James Heappey, who quit as a Defence minister this week with a plea for an immediate hike to 2.5 per cent defence spending.
“The British public are increasingly concerned about defence and security and want to see a big commitment,” he tells me. “But so do our allies on the other side of Atlantic who carrying the burden of military superpower alone.”
It’s the 75th Anniversary of Nato in Washington DC this July.
Whitehall rumours say Sunak is planning on announcing a paltry one-off £500million defence uplift to coincide with it.
This is not the time for a drop in the ocean, but a proper pledge — backed by cash — to put national security back at the heart of politics.
Who knows, voters might even like it.
BARROW WHEELING TO £200K JOB?
AS job adverts go, you do not get much more plum than the posting that quietly appeared earlier this week on Civil Service bulletin boards.
His Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington comes with £200,000 before the perks of a plush DC residence and an invite to every party in town.
Given the pending election, some had expected our current Woman in Washington Karen Pierce to have her term extended by a few months.
Such a big bauble for the next four years is arguably one for whoever will be running 10 Downing Street for the duration to hand out.
I hear the current front-runner for the job is National Security Adviser Sir Tim Barrow who also played a key role in helping Rishi Sunak get his Windsor Framework Brexit deal over the line.
But that would create a very big job opening in Whitehall – a gig eyed, some folk say, by former soft-Brexit supremo Sir Olly Robbins, who by all accounts is bored in the private sector.
It’s now an open secret in the mandarin world that Sir Olly wants to be the next Cabinet Secretary under a Labour government.
Are the golden stars starting to align?
Firm's collapse
OH dear, Keir. The Labour leader was flashing both his green and business credentials late last year visiting an electric vehicle factory, left.
He hailed Lunaz in Northamptonshire for turning old bin lorries into electric trucks, in what Starmer called a “fast-growth clean technology company”.
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And he singled it out as an example of the “incredible talent, innovation and ingenuity that exists here in Britain”.
Unfortunately they collapsed into administration last week and have now ceased trading.