Rory Stewart

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I really want to get into the politics of this with you, and it's something that you'll know much more about than me.

And one of the things we were talking about just before we came up on air

is might John Healey be thinking about himself as a future prime minister?

Could he be positioning himself for leadership?

I think the question of who the next defense secretary is is slightly less interesting because it strikes me there'll be a bit of a lame duck anyway, particularly if Andy Burnham's going into the running imminently.

But what I want to do is just remind people a little bit about what the big conversation's about.

So the big conversation is famously about the fact that following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, people have become more and more conscious of the fact that the world is getting a much more unstable place.

and that the United States has made it very clear that they're certainly not going to financially continue to bail out their European allies, but they may actually not even come to NATO's assistance.

So there's huge pressure on all countries, of which Britain is probably the leading example in Europe, maybe along with France, Europe's leading military power, to step up.

And the honest truth of the matter is,

They've talked about a 2.5% expenditure, and then there's the target of 3%, and then there's the 3.5%, and then there's a 5%.

And I remember all this because I was chair of the House of Commons Defense Select Committee.

So we spent a lot of time going for this.

And I was very proud that we led a campaign to get to 2%.

But what nobody was quite clear enough about at the time when we were getting up to 2%, which is what Trump was pushing for in 2016, is 2% is nowhere near enough.

for Britain to begin to do the range of things it wants to do.

And just very quickly again for the audience, there are basically three types of British military that you could have.

you could have the sort of nuclear Britain, which is broadly speaking what we're actually doing.