𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Britain needs to rearm so the nation can pass the “Falklands test” and assemble a task force within 72 hours to defend UK territories, former security minister Tom Tugendhat has warned. The ex-military officer, who served in Iraq, delivered a scathing assessment of the dangers facing the country, claiming: “We have ceased to be a serious military nation.”

Mr Tugendhat warned that if the country does not act quickly to strengthen its defences, the UK will be “panic-buying whatever we can at the highest prices when the urgency demands immediate action”. In a speech for the Policy Exchange think tank just days after a Pentagon email cast doubt on long-term US support for British sovereignty of the Falklands, Mr Tugendhat compared the state of the UK’s armed forces with those at the time of the 1982 conflict – when a “Royal Navy task force capable of retaking the Falkland Islands at the other end of the Earth was assembled in a weekend”.

He said: “That Britain and this Britain can hardly be called the same country.”

Mr Tugendhat, who ran for the Conservative leadership in 2024, set out the “Falklands test”: “Britain must be able to assemble a credible task force within 72 hours and deploy it to any sovereign British territory within the time window required to prevent its loss.”

Setting out a further “technology test”, he said: “Britain must be able to match and defeat a modern, fully equipped peer adversary in the air, on land, at sea, and in the electromagnetic and cyber domains, with the drones, integrated air defence, long-range fires, and the resilient command and control that contemporary warfare actually requires.”

He is also concerned about the country would cope if the UK mainland comes under attack.

“The National Health Service has no mass casualty plan designed for industrial-scale warfare,” he said. “The Cold War infrastructure that provided such a plan was dismantled in the late 1990s on the assumption that it would never be needed.”

Since the end of the Cold War, he said, “we’ve slashed the defence budget and failed to re-equip for the world as it is, not as we wish it was”.

Warning of a host of further threats, he said: “We have no integrated short-range air defence protecting critical national infrastructure. We have no contracts or budgets allocated to repair our airfields if they’re damaged or destroyed.”

Russia, he claimed, has systematically mapped the undersea cables that connects Britain with the rest of the world and may already be engaged in sabotage.

Despite the challenges facing the country, Mr Tugendhat insisted it is “not too late” and urged the UK to follow the example of allies.

“Poland has tripled its defence spending in a decade because successive Polish governments made a case and argued the need,” he said. “Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia all spend more than we do as a proportion, not because they want to, but because their leaders said the hard things clearly and their citizens, who want peace as much as ours do, chose to be serious when presented with the reality of the choice before them.”

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “Our armed forces work round the clock to keep us safe and stand ready to deploy anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. The Strategic Defence Review sets out our path to warfighting readiness, backed by the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war – with over £270 million over this Parliament, ensuring no return to the hollowed out armed forces of the past. Our Armed Forces are equipped with capabilities to ensure strength on all fronts, including the assets to protect our homeland 24/7.”