The former Chief of the General Staff Lord Dannatt has said he hopes Dan Jarvis has extracted additional money for defence or has raised the issue with Andy Burnham to do so should he become Prime Minister.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “I think this particular incident should be putting the local context of what it was: the Admiral Grigorovich has been in the Channel for quite some time, and I think the yacht in question was probably going about its…pleasurable business on the way from somewhere to somewhere like Saint Malo, or whatever, and got too close, as far as the Russians were concerned, to their warship.
“I think they probably suspected that the yacht wasn’t just a family holiday or a charter holiday yacht on its way from somewhere in the UK to somewhere in France, and probably thought it was a spy ship gathering intelligence and listening to communications on their warship, so they fired warning shots.
“So I think that’s probably what happened, but of course it’s an illustration, an example, of the rising tensions that we have got between Russia and the countries of the West; between Russia and NATO allies.
“If you put it in the broader context of just the last few days, when recently Royal Marines boarded a shadow Russian oil tanker taking embargoed oil on its journey to Russia.
“So the Russians are suspicious, the Russians are taking action, and we need to put this all in the wider context of John Healey saying the underfunding of defence of this country.
“That is a serious problem.
“I don’t think that we are in a kind of 1914 situation whereby there could be an accidental series of events that triggers a major war. But I think the significant point, and this is what the resignation of John Healey and Al Carns was really all about, to say that following the Strategic Defence Review of the last two years, led by George Robertson, published a year ago, which set out very clearly the threats and the challenges to our security and to Europe’s security, should have been met last autumn or any time since then, by the Defence Investment Plan, which set out the money that we were going to spend in this country to play our part in the defence and the security of our country, but also making a significant contribution to the collective defence of Europe.
“And that’s where we’re deficient, and frankly, the Prime Minister, having gone to the Munich Security Conference in February this year, and talked about we’re going to 3% probably 3.5% but frankly, all he’s done is, as Jeremy Clarkson would say, diddly squat.
“It’s just not good enough, and this is a serious issue that’s got to be addressed. I just hope that Dan Jarvis, having taken on the job of Defence Secretary, has extracted some kind of commitment from the Prime Minister, or if not, he’s looking beyond Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham being the next Prime Minister, to say we are going to put more money into defence.
“Because actually that’s the number one responsibility of government; to look after the safety and security of our people, and frankly, currently we are deficient.”