Gary Cartwright
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Gary Cartwright
Keir Starmer’s Defence Bonanza Is Heavy on Headlines, Light on Credibility
Britain’s political class has finally rediscovered defence. After three decades spent harvesting the post-Cold War peace dividend, ministers now speak the language of deterrence with almost evangelical conviction. Russia is rearming. China is expanding. NATO is under pressure. Europe must…
Veterans Intensify Campaign Against Northern Ireland Legacy Reforms
Britain’s most historic Army regiments have entered an increasingly bitter dispute over the government’s plans to overhaul Northern Ireland legacy legislation, lending institutional weight to a campaign that argues ageing veterans risk becoming the principal targets of renewed legal scrutiny…
Fire Point: How Ukrainian Innovation is Reinventing Air Defence
Fire Point’s ambitious interceptor programme highlights Ukraine’s growing role as a driver of European security innovation amid rising demand for advanced missile defence systems. For much of the past four years, Ukraine has been viewed primarily as a consumer of…
Pete Hegseth’s Hard Truth: Europe’s Free Ride on Defence Is Over
Pete Hegseth’s remarks in Brussels this week have unsettled many European policymakers. Yet for those who spent time serving alongside American military personnel during the Cold War, his words sounded less like provocation and more like a statement of reality…
Angela Eagle: The Worrying Case of Britain’s New Security Minister
There is an old assumption in British politics that ministerial competence is transferable. A capable minister, it is said, can move effortlessly from pensions to policing, from agriculture to intelligence, from transport to defence. Mastery of the briefing box, familiarity…
The Defence Crisis That Could Define – Or End – Starmer’s Premiership
There are ministerial resignations that bruise governments, and there are resignations that expose something deeper: a collapse of confidence at the heart of administration. The departure this week of Defence Secretary John Healey, swiftly followed by the resignation of Armed Forces…
Russia From Stalin to Putin: Why Europe’s Centre-Right Sees a Disturbing Continuity
Eighty-five years after the Soviet Union carried out the mass deportations that scarred the Baltic states and reshaped Eastern Europe, European politicians are drawing uncomfortable parallels between the crimes of the Stalinist era and Vladimir Putin’s conduct in Ukraine. The…
Britain’s Defence Crisis Is the Product of Political Failure Across Two Governments
The revelation that Britain’s entire available fleet of hunter-killer submarines has reportedly been confined to dockyards for maintenance and repair should have triggered a political earthquake. Instead, it has been greeted with the sort of weary resignation that has become…
Britain’s Defence Delusion: A Nation Rearming in Slow Motion
As Europe confronts its most dangerous security environment since the end of the Cold War, Britain’s political leadership appears trapped in a familiar cycle: ambitious declarations, strategic reviews and spending pledges that repeatedly fail to translate into meaningful action. The…
Duty, Courage and Chance: The Remarkable Life of D-Day Veteran Bill Redston
The death of Royal Navy veteran Bill Redston at the age of 101, just days before today’s 82nd anniversary of D-Day, marks the passing of a man whose life spanned some of the defining events of the modern era. It…