Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the threat of an economic crisis can be linked to our lack of defence and security.

Speaking on GB News Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said:

“When the First Sea Lord, Sir Gwyn Jenkins, goes out and says that the Navy is not in the state that he would like it to be, that is a time for us to worry.

“We’ve been talking about the state of our Armed Forces now for some years. We’ve been concerned about what has been happening. We can look at the numbers as they’ve declined

“In the Navy, but this is indicative of more broadly, from 1945 when obviously we had a lot of people and a lot of ships, all the way down to the 1980s where we had 67,000 people and 170 ships, so that in 1982 we could manage the Falklands.

“Now 3300 people, 63 ships, two aircraft carriers, six destroyers, seven frigates, six submarines and so on, an awful lot of which seemed to be under repair.

“And the world has got more dangerous. It was not unreasonable in the early 1990s to recognise that there was a peace dividend. But once you got to 2014 and you had Russia beginning to invade Ukraine, and you had the Minsk accord, and you always knew that Iran was a risk and that China, under President Xi, has become more of a risk, at that point we should have started doing more earlier.

“And I accept the Conservatives were in office at that point, but now we’ve got to catch up. We’ve got to make sure not only the money is there, but the money is spent well.

“We know all about Parkinson’s Law and that there are more admirals than there are ships and all of this; we need to focus expenditure where it will work.

“Too much of it dribbles out into things that don’t actually help and don’t manage to pay for sailors or for equipment. Because the world is dangerous. We see this now, and we see the consequences of that danger.

“The consequence is higher oil prices, higher gas prices, higher fertiliser prices. This will lead through to higher food prices.

“And on the same day that we hear that the Navy isn’t necessarily ready, we have the financial policy committee of the Bank of England saying it’s worried about a financial crisis.

“The two come together. If you’re not secure, you won’t be secure in anything.”