Contents of the Integrated Review are being drip-fed to the Times this weekend. Get ready for 2 weeks of hubris and bullshit about Britain as a "global power" operating in the Pacific and space, while the army is cut by 10,000. Thread 1/ ... thetimes.co.uk/article/defenc…
2/ The IR is both a review of foreign policy and defence: on the foreign policy, it's set to open up the first truly partisan situation in UK politics in a lifetime. Why? Labour will oppose the "tilt to the Indo-Pacific" - and so does Joe Biden... see below... 
3/ The army is getting cut because its chiefs refused to play the game of the IR, which is talk about AI, space, cyber and then build hi-tech platforms with no resilient industry behind them in times of crisis...
4/ Make no mistake - the UK armed forces do need a radical and (unfortunately) continuous redesign in response to the conventional threat from Russia, and from the lessons of the Nagorno-Karabakh war... which needs investment...
5/ But what's got the US worried is that Johnson's entire foreign policy and defence policy now looks to be a turn away from Britain's primary task in Europe. Nobody I've spoken to can see the logic other than messaging, as with the Greenwich speech....
6/ Maybe Johnson actually believes the Royal Navy should face off with the People's Liberation Army Navy? Maybe he thinks the UK electorate would buy a war against Iran? Either way Global Britain is a delusion....
7/ The UK is a medium sized power facing a continuous threat from Russia (cyber, hybrid etc) and needs a well funded conventional force focused on that threat. But that would upset Johnson's tennis partners...
8/ Next week the message should go out loud and clear. The IR is not "Britain's foreign/defence policy" - it is the Tory party's, and will be revised when a progressive government takes power...
9/ Labour's John Healey made it pretty clear in the Q&A for his RUSI speech that Labour does not see the "tilt to Indo-Pacific" as a bright idea.... nor do the Americans...
10/ It looks like Johnson designed the IR for a second Trump term, with loads of anti-China sabre-rattling and the further fragmentation of NATO. Instead, it leaves Labour and Biden aligned on the need for a European focus...
11/ Need I add that the entire fantasy of "Global Britain", carrying out military operations in the Far East, originates out of Brexit. The outcome - a diminished army, no credible warfighting division (as called for in SDSR 2015) and the aid budget slashed.
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