UK

The British armed forces face a serious recruitment problem. The army itself, currently numbering around 70,000 personnel, is the smallest it’s been since the Napoleonic wars.

The Labour government’s Strategic Defence Review, published this week, is an attempt to remedy the UK’s military problems, and move Britain towards a position of ‘war-fighting readiness’. It even talks up making the army ‘10 times more lethal’… by 2035. As former British army chief Lord Dannatt scoffed, this was the equivalent of saying in 1938 to Adolf Hitler, ‘please don’t attack us until 1946 because we’re not going to be ready’.

What I learned from debating at Oxford and Cambridge

When I was growing up, people often said British politics were where America’s would be in five, ten or 20 years. What this meant was that Britain was more to the left of America: more secular, more socially liberal, more environmentalist, more globalized. The assumption was that, over time, the left would always win out, so wherever Britain was now, America would soon be.

I traveled to the United Kingdom in May to debate the students and faculty of Cambridge and Oxford Universities in large part because that old assumption is dead and gone. Donald Trump’s political revolution has destroyed it. Now, Britain is the country trailing behind America. Make no mistake: Trump’s revolution is coming to the UK. But as I learned, just like in America, the students of elite universities may be the last to realize.

In February, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier, who asked him a question about Vice President JD Vance’s criticism of both Britain and the European Union’s censorship of free speech. Starmer responded, “We don’t believe in censoring speech…we champion free speech in the United Kingdom.”

The 2023 case of a man accused of thought crimes would indicate otherwise. Julian Foulkes, a retired special constable from Gillingham, Kent, did nothing but make a concerned response to an X post about the pro-Palestine protests that had erupted in the U.K. and the United States.

Britain wants to purchase fighter jets capable of firing tactical nuclear weapons, in a major expansion of the deterrent intended to counter the growing threat posed by Russia.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government is in highly sensitive talks over the move, which would represent the biggest development in the UK’s deterrent since the Cold War and a recognition that the world has entered a more dangerous nuclear era.

John Healey, the defence secretary, and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the armed forces, are looking to acquire American-made fighter jets capable of launching gravity bombs with lower power than conventional nukes.