Feature: Britain's new defence policy starts to take shape

UK Defence Secretary John Healey visits Joint Forces service personnel in Cyprus on 2 October 2024. (Getty)

Four months on, from the United Kingdom general election which brought Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party to power after 14 years in opposition, the new government is in the process of crafting a defence policy for the coming decade.

In the days after the election in July, a new set of ministers arrived in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) Main Building in Whitehall to take over the reins. At the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool in September Janes spoke to ministers about their plans for the coming years. This provided many insights into their priorities, even before Lord George Robertson delivers his Strategic Defence Review (SDR), expected before the end of June 2025.

Cross functions

Less than a fortnight after Starmer's government took power, the prime minister and his Defence Secretary John Healey formally launched their SDR. In an unusual move, they appointed Robertson, a former UK defence secretary and NATO secretary general, to lead the SDR, assisted by former head of UK Strategic Command General Sir Richard Barrons and former White House National Security Advisor Fiona Hill. Subsequently, six senior advisers with experience of NATO, Whitehall, and the UK Treasury, were appointed to help Robertson.