Senior figures within Nato have called Britain’s handling of its defence plans “incompetent” as political infighting continues to delay the multi-billion pound blueprint for rebuilding the armed forces, The i Paper can reveal.The long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was expected to be published Tuesday 2 June, to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Strategic Defence Review. Instead, Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said on Sunday it would be “more like weeks than months”.
A senior Nato chief said the delays were “suboptimal” for future planning, a view echoed more strongly by an analyst at the alliance who said the repeated hold-ups simply “reek of incompetence.”
“It feels like there’s more focus on bullshit” than big decisions over Britain’s defences, a senior military source told The i Paper. “The current self-inflicted, self-centred political drama is just further delaying things… It’s ridiculous.”
The warning comes as a Russian drone crashed into an apartment block in Galați, Romania on Friday – striking Nato territory and raising questions over whether Moscow is deliberately testing the alliance’s defences. Nato has condemned the strike but whether it was an accident or calculated provocation remains unknown.
