Alastair Campbell

What does he stand for?

Well, you won't know the answer to the first until you know the answer to the second, I would suggest.

But he's certainly on maneuvers.

Not without a massive opposition from within the armed forces.

I guess this is one of the points that Al Khans, the Armed Forces Minister, made in his resignation letter that we're preparing for

wars of the past rather than wars of the future.

That is all, and particularly when you've got very complicated, slow procurement systems that we have, that is a problem.

Now, listen, we talked about John Healy's resignation on the day that it happened, but just to revisit that for a bit, what seems to have happened and what seems to have emerged since then, you mentioned the Canadians coming over to try and help us on AI.

It seems that what John Healy was particularly upset about was the Treasury blocking any move towards this thing called the Defence Security and Resilience Bank, which is a Canadian proposal.

And as I understand it, is a way of sort of getting more money into defence and defence investment without necessarily having to offend the fiscal rules.

I don't know much more than that.

But so I think John Healy was looking, he had a sort of really cryptic line in his letter about, you know, there are other ways of raising money without

you know, causing too much trouble in the markets.

But you're describing a gap between need and reality that feels a lot wider than it did even when you were chairing the Defense Select Committee.

Last week, you were saying that the Strategic Defense Review...

Having been brought forward, the government should follow that plan.

But even what you're describing there is very different to that plan because this thing is moving so fast.

Yes.

By the way, before we get to break, Andrew Kinebra, does that name ring a bell?

He's the DG of Make UK.