On the bunker drill, the former minister said that all secretaries of state - not just defence - have a desk and a bed ready for them in a bunker.
This is not so they are able to survive a nuclear attack “for re-populating our islands after the apocalypse” but “because their departments are as integral to the war effort as the MoD”.
Because it’s precisely these politicians who should be repopulating after a potential apocalypse /s
Alternate title: “Former military guy can only think about conflict and makes war mongering comments to scare politicians and population”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a sign of how alien the idea of armed conflict has become to most officials in Whitehall, James Heappey said many departments had declined the chance to take part in a “whole of government” exercise to practice evacuating to a bunker in the event of war.
It was a drill former defence secretary Ben Wallace had pushed for “to get people down to the bunker so they could see what their working environment in war would be”, Mr Heappey wrote in an article for the Sunday Telegraph.
His damning intervention came after Sky News this week revealed that the government has no national plan for the defence of the UK or the mobilisation of its people and industry in a war despite renewed threats of conflict.
But any shift back to a Cold War-style, ready-for-war footing would require political leaders to make defence a genuinely national effort once again, sources told Sky News.
Piling pressure on Rishi Sunak, he wrote: "Only a foolish PM wouldn’t see that the long-term trend is towards global instability that could easily lead to a new cold war and perhaps something even hotter.
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The original article contains 683 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!