King’s Speech

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, the Prime Minister warned of the dangerous time in which we live. He went on to say:

“In the 1930s, leaders were too slow to level with the public about the fundamental shift in mindset that was required. So we must work harder today to build consent for the decisions we must take to keep us safe”.


Wise words—which makes the deafening silence that has followed all the more astonishing. Where is the national conversation that we were promised and that is crucial to convincing people, most particularly the younger generation—not to mention the Treasury—of the need to face squarely the perils ahead? At the moment, it is nowhere, and certainly not in the gracious Speech. So perhaps I can help the Minister who will wind up by suggesting some key elements that should underpin such a conversation.

The first is to remind people of what the Athenians taught the Melians during the Peloponnesian war: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. If we allow ourselves to become weak, our good intentions will count for nothing. The only intentions that will have any meaning will be those of the powerful, and, if those intentions are malign, we will just have to suffer them. The second point is that our strength is directed towards and essential to the deterrence of major conflict. Weakness makes war more, not less, likely—either that or abject surrender to the demands of an aggressor. Effective deterrence is expensive, but a failure of deterrence far more so, and the horrendous costs are then paid in blood as well as in treasure.

Effective deterrence occurs in the mind of a potential adversary: they must be convinced that malign action on their part will result in consequences that will be unacceptable to them and that conflict will result in their defeat, no matter what measures they pursue. They must therefore be clear that we have the full range of capabilities and the political will to ensure such an outcome.

Strength is of course enhanced by acting in concert with others, which is why NATO remains crucial to our security, but membership of an alliance does not absolve us of the need to pull our weight. To our shame, we are slipping well down the weight scales within NATO. Moreover, it makes no sense for NATO to rely upon a single-source supplier for crucial strategic capabilities, as we do upon the United States. This is not just a matter of one unpredictable Administration: come the day they are needed, those capabilities may be unavailable or diminished for all sorts of reasons. NATO needs to be much more resilient to such uncertainties, and this means that European members must develop alternative sources of such strategic capability, most of which will be beyond the reach of any individual nation. European partnerships to fund, develop and operate those capabilities are urgently required, but the capabilities that are necessary for victory will not all be present at the start of any conflict, either in nature or in quantity.

It is notable that many of the systems and methods that the Ukrainians are now employing so successfully against the Russians did not exist four years ago. The lesson here is that we need in Europe an agile, innovative and rapidly scalable industrial base—not, I should note, just traditional defence companies—that can rapidly adapt to the circumstances of a conflict and produce at large scale the technologies crucial to success.

The final point is that properly resourced military forces of appropriate size are essential but not by themselves sufficient for effective deterrence. Our political system, social structure and domestic infrastructure need to be resilient to the attacks they are already suffering, which would increase manifold in the lead-up to and during any conflict. Weakness in this area undermines our deterrent posture. As the Government’s own defence review made clear, we currently have shortfalls in many of the requirements for effective deterrence. We must make good those deficiencies as a matter of urgency, not just articulate vague aspirations for the future. That means fiscal choices that may be hard politically but are obvious in logic. It is a choice between pain now and a likelihood of catastrophe in the future. This is the message our political leaders must take to the country. These are the measures on which they must deliver. Yes, it will be a challenge, but it is one to which they must rise. It is time, indeed beyond time, for them to lead.