Landmark moment as the return of Trump stuns UK into action on defence
This is the moment the government finally woke up to the enormity of the threat faced by the UK and the inability of its hollowed-out armed forces to cope.
But make no mistake, today’s decision to increase military spending is not just about increasing the number of troops, warships and fighter jets or even ensuring they can use the latest drones, satellites or artificial intelligence breakthroughs.
This is an emergency that requires the entire nation to take responsibility for – or at least an interest in – the defence of the nation and the importance of being able to deter threats.
Politics latest: PM makes defence commitment
Sir Keir Starmer signalled this fundamental shift in priorities when he told parliament: “We must change our national security posture because a generational challenge requires a generational response that will demand some extremely difficult and painful choices.”
He continued: “And through those choices, as hard as they are, we must also seek unity. A whole society effort that will reach into the lives, the industries, and the homes of the British people.”
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Starmer announces defence spending hike
Such a proposal is not something new.
The UK has a long history of being prepared for war.
The entirety of the Cold War era was framed around ensuring the UK had enough troops and reservists to fight a sustained conflict, supported by a vast industrial base to produce weapons and a society that was intrinsically resilient, with the ability to sustain itself with emergency food rations, power supplies and an understanding of the need to be prepared to respond in an emergency.
Back then, the threat was war – maybe even nuclear annihilation – with the Soviet Union.
Today the threat is just as stark but also far more complex.
Russia is the immediate danger. But China poses a long-term challenge, while Iran and North Korea are also menacing adversaries.
Most fundamentally though is the change in the UK’s ability to rely squarely on its strongest ally, the United States.
Donald Trump, with his resentment of shouldering the responsibility for European security, has made clear the rest of the transatlantic NATO alliance must take much more of the share of defending themselves.
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‘The world is becoming more dangerous’
He has also signalled that he may not even be willing to deploy America’s powerful military to defend every single member state – singling out those who pay far too little on their defences.
He has a point when it comes to Europe freeloading on the might of the United States for too long.
But the suggestion that European allies can no longer automatically rely on their American partner to come to their aid is enough to call into question the value of Article 5 of the NATO Alliance, which states an attack on one is an attack on all.
When it comes to deterring foes, there must be no such uncertainty between friends.
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File pic: PA
It is why countries across Europe are being urged by the new head of NATO to rapidly ramp up defence spending and adopt what NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has called a “war mindset”.
The UK, who along with France are the only two NATO powers in Europe to possess nuclear weapons, has a bigger responsibility than most to heed that call.
Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 was not a sufficient enough alarm bell.
Eve Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022 failed to shake the UK and most of the rest of Europe from their slumber.
Instead, it seems the return of Donald Trump to the White House, with all the unpredictability that he brings, is the final shock that has stunned the UK into action.
Of course, defence insiders know that increasing spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 is not soon enough.
But this – coupled with Sir Keir’s language about the need for a “generational response” – is a landmark moment.
The beginning of the correction of a strategic mistake made by Labour and Conservative governments over years to take a “holiday from history” and fail to find credible, capable armed forces and ensure society understands the importance of defence and the ability to deter.
An unknown disease has killed more than 50 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to doctors.
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Africa office said the first outbreak was discovered in the town of Boloko, in the northwest of the country.
It is reported that three children ate a bat and died following haemorrhagic fever symptoms.
The interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been 48 hours in the majority of cases.
“That’s what’s really worrying,” Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring centre, told the news agency, The Associated Press.
An outbreak was reported in Boloko in January followed by more cases in Bomate in February
The outbreak began on 21 January and 419 cases have been recorded including 53 deaths.
There was a second outbreak of the mystery illness in the town of Bomate on 9 February.
Samples from 13 cases have been sent for testing to the National Institute for Biomedical Research in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, the WHO said.
All samples have been negative for Ebola or other common haemorrhagic fever diseases like Marburg. Some tested positive for malaria.
Last year, another mystery flu-like illness which killed dozens of people in another part of Congo was considered likely to be malaria.
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Scientists have had concerns for a long time about diseases jumping from animals to humans in places where wild animals are eaten.
The number of these types of outbreaks in Africa has surged by more than 60% in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022.
Harun is sitting hunched on a bed with a sheet over his head.
He lives in a state of psychosis and wants to return to his home in central Khartoum.
He tells us where to turn and which bridges to cross to get him there.
The war has ripped away the stability that kept him sane and permeates the mental illness that now haunts his days.
Harun lives in a state of psychosis – he may not be wounded but he is deeply scarred
“I have 37 bullets still inside me and a sniper shot me in my legs. I took 251 bullets in my legs and hip,” he says after lifting the blanket and pointing to parts of his body that show no signs of harm.
He may not have been wounded but he is deeply scarred.
We find him in a shelter for discharged hospital patients who cannot return home.
In a tented corner in the yard outside his ward, there are men nursing gunshot wounds and amputated limbs.
Badreldeen was trapped in the Shambat neighbourhood of Khartoum North as it was occupied by paramilitary fighters and militiamen belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“I told the RSF that we are not army soldiers. We are civilians but they just fired at us,” he says looking down at his bandaged leg.
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Sky News goes inside a liberated district in Sudan’s war-torn capital
Final battles for liberation of Sudan’s capital proving to be most brutal
As the RSF battles Sudan’s military for control of the capital and country, millions have been displaced and dispossessed with tens of thousands of people killed, injured and detained.
He adds: “In Shambat, lots of people died. Five people were killed in our street alone.”
‘We are civilians but they just fired at us,’ Badreldeen says looking down at his bandaged leg
Shambat is a residential district in Khartoum North – the northeastern wing of Sudan’s tri-capital known as Bahri – that has now been fully reclaimed by the military.
Some are slowly returning to their devastated homes in once-occupied areas and others wounded and brutalised under siege are flooding hospitals in the capital’s old city Omdurman.
The sounds of shells whizz over us as we move through Bahri’s southern edges.
Gunfire rings out aimed at positions just across the Blue Nile.
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On the frontline of the fight for Khartoum
The turning road to Kober Bridge and into Khartoum is bordered by a residential compound full of identical bullet-riddled orange blocks.
The charred, chewed-out corners of some of the buildings are a harsh break from uniformity.
The bridge is still intact but its base is a haunting scene.
An abandoned RSF position where blackened car bodies and beds are surrounded by stolen household items and hundreds of bullet and shrapnel shells.
A wedding dress and baby photos sit among the used ammunition.
The remnants of life ripped out of the surrounding homes and discarded.
We walk into a family home north of the bridge in Bahri and see what fills the houses instead.
Everything is turned over – couches, toy cars, roller skates, dishes.
Even the electric cables are ripped out of the walls.
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The corner of the living room is burnt by the wood broken off the antique furniture.
The clothes, cushions and anything of little monetary value are dumped in the centre of the room into a rubbish heap.
Shells boom as we leave the wreckage of the home and motorcycles with steely-eyed army soldiers whizz by on their way to the nearest front.
A military victory may be imminent in Sudan’s capital but a long road to restoration and recovery still lies ahead.
You can watch a special programme on Sudan tonight on The World with Yalda Hakim from 9pm on Sky News.
Yousra Elbagir reports from Khartoum North with camera Garwen McLuckie and producers Nkululeko Zulu and Chris Cunningham
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