Former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has described the government’s response to an attack on an RAF base as “pathetic, impotent, embarrassing.”

Speaking on GB News Sir Grant Shapps said:
“I’ve never felt the country being so impotent in a moment of global crisis. It’s literally embarrassing to see a decision not to support our American friends, a decision not to support the only democracy in the Middle East whilst they are under threat from a regime that actually openly says that it wants to kill the lot of us.

“Then to make the decision that we wouldn’t take part, and then to fail to send anything there to support the effort and [to] block the Americans from using the bases we have: pathetic, impotent, embarrassing.

“We want bigger armed forces, and I fought for that and actually won money for it. But every time I asked our brave armed forces to do anything, whether it was in the context of the Middle East, taking down Iranian drones when they fired on Israel in April 2024 and I put the RAF over Syria and Iraq, they were there to do it.

“Repeatedly, I had typhoons from Akrotiri go down and bomb the Houthis, who are menacing international traffic, hitting maritime and they did it time and again. They were there to protect our interests wherever in the world.

“I sent a gunboat to Venezuela when they were threatening Guyana with a third of their territory that Venezuela said they would take.

“And the point is you have to be prepared to use this kit, to show that you mean business. And where have we been? We’re now, what, five days into this conflict, and today they’ve decided they’ll send a ship, and it will get there in another week, maybe longer.

“I’ll tell you what the interesting thing was with that example with Venezuela, is they backed down. I sent our gunship, literally, then I had the French and the Americans join us. And after a bit of time off the coast, making clear we weren’t going to accept this, they backed down.

“Now, Guyana is a Commonwealth country, the only one in Latin America. That’s why I did it, and it works. But you know, I sent our aircraft carriers through the Red Sea in order to make clear to the Houthis that we were not going to be put off having shipping going through that corridor.

“You’ve got to be prepared to show a demonstration of force, and indeed, use force. But this government doesn’t seem to understand that this is vital to British interests.

“They don’t seem to understand there are 300,000 people in the region who are very concerned. It doesn’t understand that our own troops have been attacked in Syria and Iraq for years now, that we’ve been having our shipping attacked.

“They don’t seem to realise what British interest is if it jumps up and pokes him in the face.”