I’m sure he’s shaking in his boots

Starmer has commissioned a strategic defence review, calling in a host of experts led by Lord George Robertson, the former Nato secretary-general. It’s a necessary start, but an inadequate one. The hallowed tradition of such reviews is that they pretend to reconcile grandiose ambitions with economic austerity. The result is that Britain has a Potemkin village military retaining the emblems of a pocket superpower, but without the necessary hard capabilities. The present disordered world does not leave room for such tricks.