Speech: The 85th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain

Below is my speech given at the Victory Services Club on the Anniversary of the Battle of Britain

15th of September 2025

Secretary of State, friends and colleagues, thank you for being here tonight. As someone who wore the RAF uniform for 24 years, it’s a privilege to speak on Battle of Britain Night and to do so amongst people who live and breathe our nation’s security.

On this 15th of September, we mark the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. It is not just a date in the diary, it’s a lesson in democratic survival. What won that battle was more than courage in the cockpit. It was the system of radar chains and the Dowding network that fused data with decision; industry that could build fighters faster than pilots could break them; leadership that was clear about the ends, and that could articulate them to the public; and the contribution of allies who came to Britain’s side. But above all, it was the will of a free people who chose to resist, who chose to answer the call. That is what turned a string of airfields and a thin blue line of Hurricanes and Spitfires into a wall the enemy could not breach.

Here we are, 85 years later, the lessons of our victory are more poignant than anytime since.

Beyond our shores, the skies are once again contested. In the last few days we’ve seen Russian drones cross into NATO airspace, first in Poland, then in Romania, forcing allied jets to scramble and our alliance to signal, that borders matter and aggression has consequences. Today’s threat may be cheaper and the payload smaller, but the strategic intent is familiar: probe, normalise, divide.

And like in 1940, this pattern is repeated not just in the air, but across all domains. Energy prices are driven up to fund Russia's war on Ukraine. Cyber-attacks go un-noticed and un-attributed damaging supply chains and the industrial base. Russian agents polarise our debates using bots by funding attacks within our communities like the attacks they have incited and funded in Leyton.

This goes beyond cyber sabotage or economic weapons like our dependence on untrustworthy states for energy, critical minerals, or key technologies. It includes strikes against our communities, our social cohesion and our integrity as a liberal democracy. Unattributed attacks like those on mosques in my constituency this year sow the seeds of polarisation by setting communities against one another and are amplified by campaigns of disinformation such as those which fuelled last years riots. Coupled with years of neglect, those that need our help bear the brunt of all of the above. These are our modern evils; these are the areas on which our Battle for Britain is taking place. Each challenge is designed to do what the Blitz ultimately could not: sap the will of free societies to hold the line.

So we must be candid: the future of our democracy is not just in the hands of the Russian state, it will be won and lost in the hearts and minds of our citizens. That battle ground is a political one.

This weekend we saw very large far-right marches in London. People are entitled to protest; that’s a British liberty. But when extremists seek to turn our flag into a weapon against our neighbours, when officers are assaulted and communities intimidated, that is not patriotism, it is a test of our resolve to be the country we say we are. We must not surrender our national symbols to those who preach division. We won’t outsource Britishness to bullies. And it is for our politicians to win it back.

So what do we do?

First, we must meet state aggression with genuine capability. This Government – our Secretary of State – has set a clear course: lifting defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, and setting a course to 5%, critically including a target of 1.5% on National Resilience, in the Strategic Defence Review. The SDR is honest about the threat, ambitious about the answer, and rooted in delivery. Secure at home, strong abroad. It prioritises air and missile defence, deep magazine depth, North Atlantic undersea security, space and cyber, and the ability to surge and sustain in a prolonged crisis. It is a genuine strategy unlike those of the past 14 years which sought simply to manage decline.

Second, we’ve set industry up to deliver. The new Defence Industrial Strategy is explicit: defence is an engine for growth. We’re moving from short-notice, stop-start procurement to long-term partnering, from ‘just-in-time’ to ‘just-in-case’.

We will buy at pace where we must, build at home where we should, and export with allies where it strengthens our base. That means multi-year orders for munitions, production lines that don’t go cold, pathways for SMEs into programmes, and skills pipelines that begin in our schools and colleges and run through apprenticeships into sovereign capability. Seeing a Chief of the Air Staff who started out as a Sixth Form Scholar like me, there’s no better fuel for imagining Defence as a vehicle for social mobility and a motor for transformation.

Third, we embrace the technologies that will define deterrence. AI-enabled ISR, resilient comms, Electronic Warfare, counter-UAS, and integrated air and missile defence – all of this must move from pilot projects to pan-force adoption. The SDR sets the direction to be a tech-enabled defence power by 2035 and the DIS provides the rails on which it must run. Our job in Parliament is to make sure the money, the milestones and the accountability all line up; and on the Defence Select Committee both Alex and I will make sure that this happens.

But capability without character is not enough. The Battle of Britain reminds us that nations are defended by people before they are defended by platforms.

That’s why, I want to recognise a group whose story is inseparable from the RAF and from the Britain we built after the war: the Windrush Generation and The Pilots of The Caribbean.

Many who stepped off the Empire Windrush in 1948 were RAF veterans or airmen re-joining the Service. They answered Britain’s call in war, and then answered it again in peace, helping to rebuild our NHS, our transport system, our economy and our culture. Our modern RAF, and our modern country, are stronger because they chose this island as their home. We honour their service, uphold their rights, and will never again allow bureaucracy to deny them the dignity they earned.

But what brought us through the war, what draw all of these facets of victory together was vision and a clearly articulated vision of what victory would mean for us all.

We did not win the war in 1945 and then improvise the peace. While the bombs fell, Britain debated a plan, the Beveridge Report. Naming the “five giants” and setting a course to defeat them, Beveridge painted a clear vision of what could come next. And after victory, the country demanded delivery; Labour – our greatest government - took up that mantle.

Hospitals were built, insurance was extended, homes were raised from rubble. The will to fight had a ‘what next’.

We need that spirit again. Because the contests we face are not just between armies; they are contests between systems and stories. Authoritarians promise order without rights. Populists promise pride without responsibility; reward without sacrifice. Our answer must be a confident and clear articulation of modern British patriotism rooted in purpose: a country that is safer, fairer, and stronger because we choose to be one people.

So let me suggest our own “modern giants” to beat:

Dependence on hostile supply chains and nefarious powers.

Disinformation. Used to fracture communities and our faith in institutions.

Polarisation. Which makes everything a culture war and inhibits progress.

Neglect. Of those that need our help, veterans, families and communities who bear the brunt of all of the above.

And sitting behind the first four is economic stagnation that erodes the tax base and our ability to address society's needs.

The SDR and the Defence Industrial Strategy give us tools to address each of these. But the project is bigger than defence alone. It is about national renewal that hardens our society against shocks and unites it around a shared mission.

This is why the 1.5% commitment to Resilience is so important. It is this money which will help protect our national infrastructure, create strategic independence, and help us tackle the twin threats of disinformation and polarisation.

And that is why nights like this matter.

Politics matters. Politics is the final domain in which this existential battle is being fought. It is where our national security agenda is set; it is where decisions for investments that underwrite our national deterrence are made; it is where the reform necessary to tackle economic stagnation and neglect are created; it is where we will win the argument for our shared British values, and keep the flag we love from being hijacked by those who would turn it against our neighbours.

Eighty-five years ago, Churchill spoke of “the Few.” We rightly still honour them. But in a democracy, victory is never only about the few, it is always, ultimately, about the many: the engineers and coders, the machine workers and manufacturers, the families who keep the home fires burning, the citizens who refuse to be divided.

That wasn’t delivered by Churchill, but by Attlee. If we keep faith with the many, if we keep faith with each other, then those who test us, at home or from overseas, will find once again that this country will never cower.