Latika Takes

Risk vs reindustrialisation at Farnborough

Latika M Bourke — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:34:22 GMT

Underneath the roar of the Americans showing off the ritzy F-35A and the grace of the UAE’s National Aerobatics Team at the Farnborough International Airshow, the revamped Labour government sounded some revived vibes about their defence strategy.

‘We are going to reindustrialise this nation and create the jobs and opportunities people desperately want to see,’ the UK’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in a vertically-filmed video show played to attendees of Defence Minister Wes Streeting’s speech.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham presents a video message to the Farnborough International Air Show.

He said the civil aerospace and defence sector alone would support half a million jobs by 2030. Two-thirds, he said, were outside of London and the South-East of England.

‘We want to go further … we are going to honour our commitments on defence and use that investment to transform people’s lives and we are going to work even more closely with our allies.’

Burnham’s initial signals, which were sounded on his third day in Number 10, raise several questions.

The first is what he will define as ‘commitment.’ Technically, the UK has resolved to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035 in line with NATO allies. But for that promise to be taken credibly, the 2030 goal is important, as Burnham’s hand-picked Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey told us when he quit Keir Starmer’s cabinet in June.

Healey said in his resignation letter that the UK was on track to hit 2.68 per cent of GDP, but thought that it should be 3 per cent. So will he deliver on his own words now that he has control over the public purse? And if so, how much sooner will they pump the funding into defences and with what money? Cuts, taxes or borrowing?

It will be difficult for Healey, an excellent choice for Chancellor, to maintain credibility if he is not willing to proceed with the decisions he was urging his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, to make when she was denying him the money. We will likely see more in Burnham’s post-summer ten-year plan that he has promised.

The second, and perhaps more challenging question Burnham’s thinking on defence raises is around reindustrialisation.

Streeting, a young, ambitious, reformer and right-winger, who was desperate for the gig but was not Burnham’s first choice for defence (it was Reeves), spoke in person at Farnborough after Burnham’s two-minute video message. He said that Burnham and Healey understood defence and the pressures and priorities that defence was facing, as well as the opportunity that defence presented in meeting Burnham’s stated goal of economic growth in every postcode and growing employment opportunities.

In his speech, he set out a predilection for another r-word — risk.

‘Investment is only one side of the coin,’ Streeting said.
‘Modernisation without investment is impractical, but investment without modernisation is irresponsible.’

He pointed to the reform and modernisation that he carried out in the NHS to slash the post-COVID waiting lists as the mantra he would follow in defence.

‘We need to do things differently,’ he said.

He said a cheap new weapons system for the Royal Air Force’s Typhoon fighter jets that can take down drones, instead of expensive missiles which NATO has been using, was deployed in 42 days.

‘This is a mark of where we need to be. That means changing the way we do business and … I will direct my department to take a new approach to risk. Not every decision will come off, but that’s the price of moving at the pace of modern warfare, where delay and inaction pose the greater threat.’

This is an echo of a relatively unnoticed but genuinely meritorious speech that the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth gave last year about the need to accept less perfect, less expensive but faster-produced weapons.

A reminder, the innovation cycle in Ukraine can be as short as a few weeks.

So, inviting risk is welcome. But how does this sit with a reindustrialisation and British-first defence industry policy?

‘The Prime Minister has spoken passionately about his ambition to re-industrialise Britain. Defence is, and will be, at the forefront of that mission,’ Streeting continued.
‘We will be unapologetic about backing Britain, British ingenuity, British workers, communities in every corner of this great country. Defence will not just be a recipient of the proceeds of economic growth. It will be a central contributor to building that growth, a driver of prosperity in parts of the country that are crying out for the backing they need to make their contribution to the challenge of our time.’

Prioritising local big defence companies and domestic builds can be the very reason why major projects blow out in costs, overrun in delivery times or fail altogether — just look at Australia’s disastrous decade in trying to sort out how to buy or make submarines.

Brontanax on display at the Farnborough International Air Show. Photo: Latika M Bourke

The glossy example of the UK’s new risk-prone approach was the Collaborative Combat Air (CCA) programme called StormFighter. Earlier, Streeting helped reveal BAE’s first contestant, an impressive whale-shaped jet called Brontanax.

‘With the advent of CCA, and their integration with crewed platforms like the Typhoon, we will make the RAF Europe’s first sixth-generation air force. These uncrewed autonomous fighter jets will provide us with eyes and ears, carry missiles and confuse the enemy. Five at a time and 500 miles ahead of the Typhoon pilots controlling them, crucially, at a fifth of the price of that aircraft,’ he said.

But Brontanax hasn’t even flown. The government wants to get it in the air next year and StormFighter operating by the end of the decade.

The UK is entering a crowded market late.

Across the carpark sat Australia and Boeing’s version called Ghost Bat. When I stopped by the stand, the Pentagon’s acquisition team was also visiting.

Ghost Bat on display at the Farnborough International Air Show. Photo: Latika M Bourke

Boeing and the RAAF debuted its Ghost Bat prototype as far back as 2019 and this month took part in a massive exercise led by the Pentagon across the Western Pacific that imagined the need to defend against, amongst other things, cruise and ballistic missile attacks.

A Ghost Bat practised combat alongside a US aircraft, as well as refuelling.

The model displayed at Farnborough had a missile that would be externally attached on show, but the next generation of Ghost Bat will have the weapons inside, making the combat drone stealthier.

Burnham and Streeting are making some nice noises, but these new kids on the block will need to demonstrate how they plan to square an industrial-strategy-first approach to defence with the urgent need to scale up cheaper systems fast at best cost to the taxpayer.

PS: Yeah but a drone will never let you climb into the cockpit for a cool photo. (The cockpit is just one big touchscreen btw!)

Farage attacks 'chameleon' Burnham

Latika M Bourke — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 22:13:14 GMT

Nigel Farage did not look a man under pressure as he granted Liz Truss something she could never hope to conjure herself — a crowd.

For the past two days, the former UK prime minister has attempted to recreate the US right-wing blockbuster event that is the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the UK.

But CPAC-GB, like Truss’s record-short…

Keir farewells a strengthened Kemi

Latika M Bourke — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 06:23:11 GMT

Political departures are hard to mess up. Opponents exchange the savagery for sentimentality to pay tribute as the slain bleat about looking forward to spending more time with the family.

Gracious words are said, tears are sometimes shed. And so it came to pass on Wednesday when the House of Commons farewelled its seventh prime minister since Brexit.

If Ankara was Trump's last NATO, Mark Rutte can pat himself on the back

Latika M Bourke — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:00:50 GMT

Donald Trump arrived in Ankara, blustering and blowing about taking over Greenland, threatening to cut all trade with Spain and bemoaning the lack of European support for his unannounced war in Iran.

But he left NATO praising the same leaders, hailing the tremendous unity and love in the room and even dangled the prospect of granting Ukraine permission …

China fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, NATO takes note

Latika M Bourke — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:42:36 GMT

Ankara: For the second time in two years, China has tested a nuclear-capable missile in the Pacific.

The latest test was launched by a nuclear-powered submarine in the South Pacific and involved an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or nuclear-capable missile carrying a dummy warhead.

The test was confirmed on Monday by the Chinese propaganda outl…

The UK's defence investment plan & AUKUS

Latika M Bourke — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 05:56:28 GMT

Stephen Lovegrove was right. Last week, when I asked him if he held concerns that underfunding of defence would affect the UK’s long-term plans to build nuclear-propelled submarines for Australia, he said no.

Latika Takes

I want to continue as Andy Burnham's AUKUS envoy

Sir Stephen Lovegrove says he wants to stay on in his role as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on AUKUS under Andy Burnham. He has been in the specially-created role since April last year…

a month ago · 3 likes · Latika M Bourke

Lovegrove remains Keir Starmer’s Special Representative for AUKUS and wants to continue in the job under Andy Burnham, who has given little clue a…

Burnham banishes the ghoul of Keir past

Latika M Bourke — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 05:54:29 GMT

A prime minister wins a landslide majority, returning a centre-left party to a rare position – power, but before the political conqueror can even think about replicating their ballot box success, along comes a usurper, who openly shuns the trappings of office to underline their intention that they mean to do things differently.

Andy Burnham’s decision to…

What I'm Reading

Latika M Bourke — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 23:46:09 GMT

If Russia wins

If Russia Wins: A Scenario is an interesting conceptual book that I had cause to come across. It is essentially a tabletop exercise of what might happen in a Russian attack on NATO.

Carlo Masala, a German political scientist, takes the worst-case scenario and applies it to a response that today’s politicians might take.

What I liked about this book was the total nature of warfare, or attack, it describes. This is not an exercise in military manoeuvres or even resources or exercises, but rather an application of how war could be effected, merely because politicians are not equipped to respond to the subtler ways an attack could begin and metastasise across the Alliance.

While Masala takes the most fatalistic options (hence, If Russia Wins!) it becomes difficult to accept all his premises that would lead to this disaster, that the French have been overtaken by the far-right, the Americans effectively withdraw from NATO and that they are successfully scared off by nuclear threats.

Since Masala wrote this book and updated it with an afterword last year, there have been some very promising developments in Europe, especially the fall of the Orban government in Hungary.

At just 120 pages, this book is clear and concise and is written in very simple English. So it can be easily followed by anyone, particularly those with no background in or or only a passing interest in national security. I particularly appreciated the way he illustrated how all the levers of political pressure could be applied simultaneously by an aggressive Russia, such as causing a migration crisis that Europe would have to respond to, diverting military resources, as well as an orchestrated leadership transition in Russia to whitewash the war acts.

If Russia Wins concludes with a bleak non-fictional afterword in which Masala laments the ‘social and political fatigue’ that has spread through European society over the past decade or so. In response, he argues, elites need to fortify Europe against the looming prospect of a Russian military ‘stress test’, the urgency of which is heightened by America’s ongoing withdrawal, under Trump, from its role as the continent’s post-war patron and protector. Among Masala’s preferred policy options are ‘higher defence spending, accelerated armament processes, and the reintroduction of universal conscription’, including in states where conscription has been ‘suspended or abolished in the last thirty years’.

To some extent, these things are already happening. Across Europe, defence budgets are going up. Germany plans to double its defence spending over the next four years. In Britain, spending on national security will increase from 2.3 per cent of GDP in 2025 to 5 percent in the 2030s. In France, Emmanuel Macron is plotting a radical expansion of the French army, and his government is launching a voluntary military service programme aimed at eighteen and nineteen-year-olds this summer. At the same time, in each of these countries, public services are being decimated, and the nationalist right is on the rise. Russia may or may not win in Ukraine, but Europe is more than capable of losing on its own.

Tribune

Putin has no successor

A rich and informative read on Sergei Ivanov, the man who could have been Vladimir Putin’s successor by .

Ivanov died this week, aged 73.

After Putin chose the less popular Dmitry Medvedev as his successor in 2008, Sergei Ivanov faded into the background. But four years later he made an unexpected comeback. When Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, he appointed Ivanov as his chief of staff.

By then, however, Ivanov no longer displayed the drive that had once defined him. According to people who knew him, he had grown tired and believed that his chance had already passed.

…

In reality, however, Ivanov no longer wielded any significant political influence, especially after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. One indication of this was the fate of his younger son, who headed Russia’s state diamond monopoly, Alrosa, until 2023. That year he was dismissed without receiving another senior government or corporate position.

According to widespread reports, Sergei Ivanov had been suffering from cancer in recent years. The death of Putin’s former heir apparent—a man once regarded as an even greater hawk than Putin himself—is deeply symbolic. According to current Kremlin insiders, today’s Putin has no intention of ever handing over power to anyone. He is his own successor.

The Last Pioneer

Russia's Would-Be President Has Died

Sergei Ivanov, the man once widely regarded as Russia’s next president, has died. He was considered one of Putin’s closest allies and was only a few months younger than the Russian president. He was just 73 years old…

a month ago · 179 likes · Mikhail Zygar

Rutte v Meloni

After having a very public spat with US President Donald Trump, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is battling another foreign intervention, this time from NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz watches US President Donald Trump speaking with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni at the G7. Photo: White House

Rutte, always eager to please Trump and argue a Trumpian case to the US media as a way of trying to keep the US inside NATO, revealed to Fox News that the Italians had allowed thousands of US flights to use their bases to attack Iran.

Trump is furious at the Europeans for denying usage of the bases, and European leaders have been at pains to tell their populations how much they disagreed with Israel and the US’s war against Iran and that they did not participate.

Making Rutte’s comments, politically problematic for Meloni.

Meloni pushed back on Thursday, saying Rutte was incorrectly implying that flights from Italy were used in direct attacks on Iran in his eagerness to convince Washington that NATO was playing a significant role.

‘In his — let’s call it enthusiastic — account, the secretary-general has lumped together things that are actually quite different from one another, confusing the types of authorized flights,’ Meloni told reporters during a Franco-Italian summit in southern France.

‘We did not participate in the conflict with Iran. By the way, if we had participated in the Iran conflict, there would be no explanation for this disappointment that the U.S. president keeps reiterating very often,’ Meloni added.

The Italian prime minister has clashed with Trump over recent days, with the American president pointedly slamming her for refusing access to Italian bases for U.S. bombers.

She reiterated that Italy only allowed bases to be used for logistical and technical operations.

Meloni said she had no clue why Rutte gave this ‘oversimplified account.’

Politico

Vucic goes promising to accelerate path to EU

Serbia’s President Alexander Aleksandar Vucic will resign, ending his 12-year rule of the Balkan nation.

Serbia has been witnessing anti-government protests, sparked by the deadly collapse of a railway station roof in Novi Sad, for more than a year and a half.

The tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, killed 16 people and shocked the public amid reports that corrupt practices had led to shoddy construction at the railway station, a flagship government project carried out by Chinese companies.

At their peak, the protests over the incident, largely attended by students, were the largest in Serbia since the demonstrations that led to the toppling of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic 25 years ago.

At the June 27 rally, Vucic called for dialogue with the demonstrators but at the same time accused the movement of being influenced by foreign actors, who are allegedly interfering in the country’s politics. He provided no evidence for the claims.

Separately, in recent months, Serbia has faced a series of other scandals, including rising nationalist sentiment, controversial construction projects, and uncertainty over its stalled path to the European Union, as some member states are fretting about the country’s nonalignment with the bloc’s sanctions policy toward Russia.

Radio Free Europe

A plane crashes into a Chinese skyscraper…

But don’t ask any questions.

This story provides an almost-unbelievable insight into communist China.

On Friday, a small plane crashed into Beijing’s tallest skyscraper, the 109-story CITIC Tower.

A total of 14 people, including the pilot, were killed. But the Chinese Communist Party is not telling the public how or why this happened.

A short while later, it was like nothing had happened.

All references to the incident – and the shocking footage of it – had been scrubbed from Chinese social media. The government initially did not publicly acknowledge any incident had taken place. State media – including the country’s national broadcaster CCTV, headquartered across the road from the crash site – made no mention of the incident.

That’s thanks to the work of China’s army of censors and the Communist authorities’ obsessive control over information, particularly concerning events they believe may bring negative attention or consequences

The information vacuum left a host of unanswered questions for those who witnessed the event or saw reports of it. For almost a day, it was unknown how many people were injured in the incident.

On Saturday afternoon local time, media affiliated with the Beijing government reported a ‘single-engine double-seat light sports aircraft collided with a high-rise building in flight,’ and that the pilot – the only person on board – had been killed and 13 people injured at the scene. The incident was being ‘investigated,’ it said.

It’s still unknown whether the crash was accidental or intentional.

Perhaps most worryingly for authorities, it’s also raised questions of how the pilot managed to fly over China’s fortified capital, where most of the Communist Party elite live, and where even flying drones is effectively banned.

CNN

And that’s my list for this week.

Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye, I enjoy knowing what you’ve been reading.

I want to continue as Andy Burnham's AUKUS envoy

Latika M Bourke — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:20:29 GMT

Sir Stephen Lovegrove says he wants to stay on in his role as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on AUKUS under Andy Burnham. He has been in the specially-created role since April last year.

Lovegrove also reassured Australia and the US that the political upheaval, namely the ousting of Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister of the UK after just tw…

A new frontman for the Downing Street carousel

Latika M Bourke — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:38:00 GMT

British Labour finally embraced an Australian-style knifing to depose its gormless and fundamentally inadequate leader, but it was Keir Starmer’s decision to copy Anthony Albanese’s pre-election small-target strategy that brought about his downfall.

And Labour MPs should note that they risk making the UK appear an international laughing-stock if they do …

Populism is not unstoppable

Latika M Bourke — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:01:28 GMT

The death of two-party politics cannot be pronounced quite yet.

Two byelection results held in the United Kingdom delivered stunning, and in Labour’s case, consequential outcomes.

Labour’s ‘King of the North,’ Andy Burnham, united the left behind him, reducing the recently resurgent Greens and Liberal Democrats to less than half a per cent. But how he wo…

Latika Takes interviews Ben Judah

Latika M Bourke — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 08:14:34 GMT

This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is in London speaking with , who served as special advisor to former UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Mr Judah discusses the UK’s relationships with China, Europe, the United States and his failed attempts to kickstart a new CANZUK club, comprising Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Ben Judah, former special advisor to David Lammy with Latika M Bourke.

He discusses his fears about the debate around UK Defence Spending, the credibility gap opening up in NATO and why the UK needs to borrow Australia’s model of government to be more effective in achieving its goals.

This discussion references an article published by the Financial Times detailing leaked comments by the UK’s Ambassador to the US, Christian Turner, saying Israel was the UK’s only special relationship.

What I'm Reading

Latika M Bourke — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 23:43:17 GMT

Keir Starmer clings on: ‘It’s not about vanity’

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to the BBC.

It is beyond sad watching Keir Starmer cling to his leadership, for the sake of so little. He continues to pay the price for running an agenda-free election campaign and, in government, is trapped by his own political ineptitude, a charmless Chancellor in Rachel Reeves and a Labour party that thinks the country’s problems can be fixed by endless welfare.

The departure of John Healey as Defence Secretary was a body blow. Healey is no leadership rival (more on that below) and was an uber-loyalist to the prime minister.

His decision to quit because Starmer and Reeves have no intention of funding defence to meet a threat level that includes a potential attack by Russia on NATO within three and a half years is devastating.

But Starmer is unperturbed, as usual. He filled Healey’s vacant post with the junior home office minister Dan Jarvis.

In a veiled warning to potential leadership challengers in his own party, he said: ‘Whoever is prime minister is going to face the same prevailing winds as I am facing, none of that is going to change.’

Asked if he wanted to lead Labour into the next election, he said that was what he wanted to do, but acknowledged: ‘I need to turn things around.’

He said he did not want to ‘plunge’ the country into the ‘chaos’ of a leadership election but added: ‘If it does happen, I will fight.’

‘Let me be clear that this is not about personal vanity, it is not about stubbornness, it is about a very deep sense of duty,’ he said.

‘I was elected to serve this country notwithstanding difficult circumstances - that is what I am doing.’

BBC

Defence matters for Labour’s next PM

Former Labour MP has an interesting analysis about what the row means for the future of the party’s electoral viability, and the more immediate leadership contest.

He says Healey goes with his reputation enhanced, although writes his former colleague’s obituary. This may be hasty as Healey could emerge as a credible, consensus candidate, drawing upon his bolstered reputation, as I wrote here.

A cabinet minister resigning over a point of principle is rare enough to command respect. He goes with his reputation enhanced.

Which makes Jarvis’s task brutally clear. He inherits a settlement his predecessor judged a danger to the country: spending creeping from 2.6 per cent of GDP next year to 2.68 per cent by 2030, an extra £13.5 billion against the £28 billion the service chiefs say they need. The armed forces minister Al Carns, another decorated soldier, walked out alongside Healey. In resigning after John, Carns showed that however stellar military his career, his political judgement was poor. The causes he proclaimed in his resignation letter required him to be on the inside, not on a tour of the resignation interview circuit.

The defence community, from the chiefs to the supply chain, is distinctly irritated, and worse: it agrees with the Secretary of State who just resigned. Jarvis’s biggest challenge is convincing that community he can hustle up the defence budget across Whitehall, against a Treasury that has just faced down a defence secretary and won.

My guess is that he can. Here is why. The single biggest question being put to the various candidates for the Labour leadership, despite there being no vacancy, is where do you stand on defence and the defence budget. Wes Streeting has gone to the backbenchers to build his platform. Andy Burnham circles with his. Every contender knows that credibility on national security is now the entry ticket to the contest, just as Jarvis himself argued back in 2019 when he said a Labour leader “had to be credible when it comes to the economy and when it comes to national security”. A prime minister fighting for his political life cannot afford to lose two defence secretaries over money in one parliament. Jarvis knows it. The Treasury knows it. That is leverage, and leverage is what Healey, for all his virtues, never quite had.

There is a deeper shift underneath. For a decade the party’s centre of gravity ran through health, housing and the cost of living. It now runs through the defence of the realm. Politics has moved, at last, onto Dan Jarvis’s ground: the man with the medals, the comprehensive education and the marathon habit, who has waited fifteen years while lesser CVs overtook him in the queue.

Tom Watson's Newsletter

The Steely-eyed Messenger of Death Goes to the MoD

The Parachute Regiment does not hand out sentimental nicknames. The one they gave Dan Jarvis was SEMOD: Steely-eyed Messenger of Death. Soldiers reserve that sort of dark tribute for officers who stay calm when everything around them is not. Yesterday evening, with his government reeling and his predecessor’s resignation letter still warm, Keir Starmer …

2 months ago · 36 likes · 6 comments · Tom Watson

The rivals circle

The leadership candidates are wasting no time.

Wes Streeting, former Health Secretary.

Wes Streeting, the former health secretary who quit cabinet to make a tilt for Number 10, has no clear record on defence or foreign policy. But he has proposed several ways of funding defence, as well as services.

‘We’ve seen serious proposals around the Defence Security and Resilience Bank, which is now led by Canada. Great initiative. We’re not part of it. We’ve seen serious proposals for defence bonds, which would be inheritance tax-free defence bonds, so that we can get the huge amounts of money that are currently sat in all sorts of other savings and investments, probably not earning a great deal of interest, actively investing in the defence of our nation today.’

In Streeting’s view, the Prime Minister has failed to take responsibility for defence spending as well as a number of other issues. ‘[He] says he takes responsibility. I don’t think he does, actually. I don’t think he’s taken responsibility or even acknowledged what happened to good Labour people who lost their seats in May. And I don’t think he has taken responsibility for gripping this Defence Investment Plan and when you’ve got a defence secretary saying that the Chancellor is unwilling to fund it, and the Prime Minister is unable to effectively lead, I think it underscores the case for change and change quickly because we can’t go through any more of this inertia.’

He also lambasted the government for announcing a £4.5 billion walking and cycling scheme the day after Healey and Carns resigned, calling it ‘bad judgement as well as bad politics’.

‘Now, as a former health secretary, I’m all in favour of walking and cycling,’ he said.

‘I think these are good things, but would people watching and listening honestly say that if you’ve got a defence secretary who’s telling you there is insufficient funding to keep our country safe, would you, the very next day, as a matter of style, let alone substance, have an announcement for four and a half billion for walking and cycling?’ he said.

‘That’s not a choice I would make, and I think it’s a really good example of bad judgement, bad policy, as well as bad politics.’

New Statesman

Burnham’s vague plans

Andy Burnham’s plans are less concrete. The Labour Mayor of Manchester is contesting the Makerfield byelection next week.

Andy Burnham

If he wins, a leadership challenge to Starmer is all but on. He wants to prioritise British jobs as part of procurement and defence resilience. Insisting on domestic-only or domestic-first builds is a huge part of why governments find it so hard to deliver weapons on time and in budget.

‘The world has changed, it’s obvious to anybody who looks at it, and we are going to have to change the assumptions on which we’ve been working,’ he says.

‘I would say it’s defence and security but also resilience.’

It is at this point that Burnham begins to set out one of the first planks of his plans for power. He thinks that there needs to be not just a ten-year approach to defence and security, but a ten-year approach to public investment and procurement. As part of the plan, all public procurement would have to include a measurable commitment to ‘social value’, such as work placements and apprenticeships for young people.

This, he says, is the ultimate way to help reduce the welfare bill and ensure there is more money available for defence. “I am not squeamish about saying that the plan would be to reduce the welfare bill,” he says. “Not at all.” But under Burnham’s vision this would be about taking people out of welfare and into work.

‘It is not the traditional Westminster way of just crude cuts, short-term cuts that then create a backlash and create more political turbulence. It is actually going to do things that will reduce the benefits bill, moving towards a more preventative state that makes the right investments to support people into work.’

The Times

MAGA gets tactful

Elbridge Colby, the number two at the Pentagon, weighed in, but was in keeping with the new tactful tone that the Department of War’s chief bomb-throwers have adopted of late. (Pete Hegseth’s recent speech in Singapore not berating allies was a case in point).

The United Kingdom has an extraordinarily proud military history. It commands our respect. There is again a great need for more British military strength in this critical time. We urge the UK to meet that need with urgency, scale, and determination.

As I said recently in Normandy, ‘Here soldiers, sailors, and airmen from Great Britain and Canada demonstrated the courage, tenacity, dedication, daring, and loyalty that won them the lasting admiration and gratitude of the whole world – not only here in Normandy but also through the entirety of two World Wars…

‘Our purpose now must be to take our resolve from the legacy of Normandy – to look at our challenges realistically and seriously, to build our military strength individually and together, and to restore our home fronts that can, once again, supply overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions.’

Under Secretary of War for Policy on X

And that’s my list for this week.

I have had a few mental weeks.

I moderated and MCed the GLOBSEC Forum in Prague, attended the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, Ukraine and moderated a session as well as attended the German Marshall Fund’s China Stockholm Forum in Sweden last week in my capacity as Associate Expert at the Australian National University’s National Security College.

In the Green Room with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola at GLOBSEC, Prague.

Admiring Ukrainian patriotism at the Black Sea Security Conference at Odesa Opera House.

So please forgive the lack of reading updates in between.

Next week I will be attending the Kiel Security Conference in Germany.

On the ABC’s Global Roaming, Geraldine Doogue and I spoke to Suzy Hansen about the slide to authoritarianism under President Erdogan.

And Kylie Morris and I spoke to human rights lawyer and researcher Ahmed Abofoul about whether the war in Iran is accelerating the green transition.

Listen on all podcast apps and here.

Please do send me anything that’s caught your eye, I enjoy knowing what you’ve been reading.

John Healey's resignation is terrible for AUKUS

Latika M Bourke — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 23:14:17 GMT

The final sentence John Healey spoke as Defence Secretary were a pledge on AUKUS, consisting of just three words: ‘And we will.’

The vow was an addendum to Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s reasoning for why the US, UK and Australian governments were committed to delivering AUKUS submarines to Australia. Under the current plan, Australia will buy three used…

Latika Takes interviews Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi

Latika M Bourke — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 08:07:14 GMT

This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is in Slough, the constituency of Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dheshi, who chairs the House of Commons Defence Select Committee.

Latika M Bourke and Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dheshi.

Mr Dhesi discusses the contents of his Committee’s recent review into AUKUS which found the program is ‘faltering.’

He says the program is ‘plodding along’ and needs a new push from the AUKUS leaders.

He calls for an AUKUS visa, a dedicated envoy in each country to oversee the program as well as a boost in the UK’s defence spending.

The AUKUS review can be found here: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9068/aukus/

This discussion also references this article and event.

Taking four years to announce an AUKUS project? That's embarrassing

Latika M Bourke — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:57:26 GMT

Richard Marles’s address to the Shangri-La Dialogue, in which the Australian Defence Minister warned of the threats to vital seabed cables that transmit the digital blood of the global economy, only underlined Labor’s pallid, catch-up mode when it comes to national security.

That it has taken the government four years to come up with a ‘first-ever’ progr…

🇺🇦 From Odesa, Latika Takes interviews Nico Lange

Latika M Bourke — Sun, 31 May 2026 08:01:55 GMT

This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is in Odesa, Ukraine attending the Black Sea Security Forum.

Nico Lange speaks to Latika Takes: The Podcast on the sidelines of the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, Ukraine.

Latika’s guest is Nico Lange, who served as an advisor to former German Defence Minister AKK.

Now, as founder of the think tank IRIS, he goes back and forth from the frontline in Ukraine and monitors the changing nature of warfare.

In this episode, Latika and Nico discuss how Ukraine has made its gains in 2026, the ongoing failures of the West to adapt and enable Ukraine, whether the Europeans should negotiate with Vladimir Putin and NATO’s inability to protect its airspace from Russian drones.

An interview with Trump's Board of Peace High Rep for Gaza

Latika M Bourke — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:35:04 GMT

In Prague, I interviewed Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat, whom Donald Trump appointed as High Representative for Gaza on the Board of Peace.

You can watch the full interview below:

🇨🇿 From Prague, Latika Takes interviews Mark Esper

Latika M Bourke — Sun, 24 May 2026 16:27:33 GMT

This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is in Prague at the GLOBSEC Forum, now in its 21st year.

She interviews Mark Esper, who served as US Secretary of Defence under Donald Trump, between 2019 and 2020.

Latika M Bourke with former NATO SG Anders Fogh Rasmussen and former US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper at the GLOBSEC Forum 2026.

Secretary Esper discusses why he felt ‘offended’ by the European response to the United States and Israel’s decision to launch a war against Iran in February and why it has set back NATO, already under fire from US President Donald Trump.

He discusses US expectations of allies in the event of a Chinese grab on Taiwan and how allies should approach dealings with the Trump Administration.

🇪🇪 From Tallinn, Latika Takes interviews Kaupo Rosin

Latika M Bourke — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:48:01 GMT

This week Latika Takes: The Podcast is at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia.

Her guest is Kaupo Rosin, the Director General of Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, which is widely regarded as one of the best when it comes to understanding what is going on inside Russia.

Kaupo Rosin, Director General of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service and Latika M Bourke at the Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn, Estonia

Latika and Kaupo discuss the unfavourable turn that the war in Ukraine has taken, the effect it has had on Vladimir Putin, what the West should now do, and China’s dominance over Russia.

They also discuss the societal unhappiness with Vladimir Putin’s shutdown of messaging services, the internet and VPNs and the possibility that the Russian President may have to start conscripting men to fight, bringing the war to the homes of those who have previously felt untouched.

They also discuss the effect of US President Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about NATO as well as the pause and withdrawal of military assets from Europe.