The whole of the UK – not just its armed forces – needs to step up to deter the threat posed by Russia of a wider war in Europe, Britain’s military chief will say.

In the kind of nation-wide call to action that has not been heard since the height of the Cold War, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will use a speech in London on Monday evening to urge the British public to make defence and resilience “a higher priority”.

He will say Russia’s war in Ukraine shows that Vladimir Putin’s willingness to target his neighbours “threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK. The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO”.

Yet there was nothing in excerpts of the speech – released in advance by the Ministry of Defence – that pointed to any push by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to increase defence spending faster than planned, despite the flashing warning signs and concerns among senior military officers that the budget is currently set to grow too slowly.

In a further articulation of the threat, Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, will use a separate speech on Monday to warn that the “front line is everywhere” in a new “age of uncertainty”.

“The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement,” she will say, in her first public comments since becoming the first female chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in October.

“We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”

Read more:
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Defence and security chiefs across the NATO alliance are increasingly sounding the alarm about the potential for Russia’s war in Ukraine to ignite a much wider conflict.

Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, last week said Europe must ready itself for a confrontation with Russia on the kind of scale “our grandparents and great-grandparents endured” – a reference to the First and Second World Wars.

At the same time, Al Carns, the UK’s armed forces minister, said Britain is “rapidly developing” plans to ready the entire country for the possible outbreak of war.

Sky News revealed last year that the UK had no national plan for the defence of the country or the mobilisation of its people.

By contrast, a detailed blueprint for the transition from a state of peace to one of war existed throughout the Cold War, setting out not just what the armed forces, emergency services and local governments had to do in the event of conflict, but also wider society, including people working in industry, schools and public transport.

However, this Government War Book was quietly shelved after the Soviet Union collapsed and successive governments took a so-called “peace dividend”, shifting investment out of defence and into other priorities such as health and welfare.

Sky News and Tortoise have documented the hollowing out of the UK’s armed forces and wider national resilience in a podcast series called The Wargame.

The expected comments by Air Chief Marshal Knighton in an annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) appear to signal an attempt by the government to put the country back on more of a war footing in the face of rising threats.

But military insiders have warned that a timeline set out by the government of 10 years to boost defence spending to 3.5% of GDP from 2.3% is far too slow.

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The chief of the defence staff will say: “The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the response requires more than simply strengthening our armed forces. A new era for defence doesn’t just mean our military and government stepping up – as we are – it means our whole nation stepping up.”

He will nod to the planned uplift in spending, noting “the price of peace is increasing”.

He is set to say: “The war in Ukraine shows that Putin’s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, potentially with such novel and destructive weapons, threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK.”

This is a threat that wider society needs to prepare for as well as the military.

“Our armed forces always need to be ready to fight and win – that’s why readiness is such a priority,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.

“But deterrence is also about our resilience to these threats, it’s about how we harness all our national power, from universities, to industry, the rail network to the NHS. It’s about our defence and resilience being a higher national priority for all of us. An ‘all-in’ mentality.”

It is a highly unusual intervention that has echoes of the Cold War when the UK last involved all of society in a programme of national defence and resilience against the threat of World War Three and potential nuclear Armageddon posed by the then Soviet Union.

“We are heading into uncertainty, and that uncertainty is becoming more profound, both as our adversaries become more capable and unpredictable, and as unprecedented technology change manifests itself,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
Women still feel unsafe on streets
Minister ‘clarifies’ violence strategy

Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”

There have been no migrant arrivals in small boats crossing the Channel for 28 days, according to Home Office figures.

The last recorded arrivals were on 14 November, making it the longest uninterrupted run since autumn 2018 after no reported arrivals on Friday.

However, a number of Border Force vessels were active in the English Channel on Saturday morning, indicating that there may be arrivals today.

So far, 39,292 people have crossed to the UK aboard small boats this year – already more than any other year except 2022.

The record that year was set at 45,774 arrivals.

It comes as the government has stepped up efforts in recent months to deter people from risking their lives crossing the Channel – but measures are not expected to have an impact until next year.

December is normally one of the quietest for Channel crossings, with a combination of poor visibility, low temperatures, less daylight and stormy weather making the perilous journey more difficult.

The most arrivals recorded in the month of December is 3,254, in 2024.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy met with ministers from other European countries this week as discussions over possible reform to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) continue.

The issue of small boat arrivals – a very small percentage of overall UK immigration – has become a salient issue in British politics in recent years.

Last month, French maritime police announced they would soon be able to intercept boats in the English Channel.