A year ago you might have struggled to predict that Dominic Cummings and Rishi Sunak would be in charge of a defence review that could change Britain’s military objectives for a generation or more.
One of them, the prime minister’s very special adviser, marches to his own tune and his well-publicised tour of the country’s most important military establishments is enough to put the chiefs of staff in a tiz.
The unheralded chancellor of the exchequer, meanwhile, will have little or no money in a few months’ time, when the impact of the Covid-19 economic turmoil begins to tot up. In any event, no one believes that anyone at the Ministry of Defence is in charge of defence policy.
What all this means for
