Whitehall, London
THE ARMOURED AND supercharged five-litre Range Rover Sentinel carrying the Chief of Defence Staff made the journey from High Wycombe to Whitehall in under fifty minutes. As his driver barrelled down the darkened and largely empty M40 motorway, Air Chief Marshal Crosland used the time to get up to speed on Russia’s Pacific Fleet. You could ask Crosland anything about the range and payload of a Russian Tu-22 Tupolev bomber, the number of F35s you could fit onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, or the explosive power of a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile, but when it came to what the Russian Navy was deploying out of Vladivostok he still had a lot of catching up to do. By the time they drove through the police checkpoint where Horse Guards Road meets the back of Downing Street he had fired off no fewer than eighteen questions to his Chief of Staff. CDS had no wish to look foolish on a day like today.
Crosland had already been in Downing Street for more than two hours before all the senior figures of Britain’s national defence and security establishment began arriving for the early-morning emergency COBRA session. First, he had a meeting upstairs with the National Security Adviser and the Defence Secretary, then fifteen minutes with the PM before they all moved below ground for the COBRA.
‘As of this morning,’ declared the PM, ‘we are in a different paradigm. The risk level on this whole Taiwan situation blowing up in our faces has just gone through the roof. CDS, can I ask you to give everyone here a read-out of the CRIP?’
On both sides of the road that divided Cabinet Office from the MoD Main Building in Whitehall, teams had been working through the early hours to produce a document known as the Commonly Recognized Information Picture, or CRIP, a tool usually reserved for the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
‘Certainly, PM.’ Air Chief Marshal Crosland removed his glasses and straightened in his chair. ‘At latest count, Defence Intelligence report a total of thirty-seven Chinese and Russian surface vessels deployed from port and heading for the area of the Taiwan Strait. We can expect more to deploy in the coming hours. Plus an unknown number of SSNs and SSBNs.’
‘Sorry, SSNs? SSBNs?’ The Home Secretary, grappling with the military’s love of acronyms and jargon.
‘Submarines, Home Secretary. Stands for sub-surface nuclear-powered and sub-surface ballistic nuclear. We can’t always know where they are but we have to assume both fleets will be deploying them.’
‘Strewth.’
‘Exactly. On our side of the equation, we’ve got the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet Carrier Strike Group moving into position close to the 26th north parallel. We’ve got Daring in a defensive posture west of Taiwan alongside her sister ships from that AUKUS patrol.’
‘The one the Chinese fired a missile at, across her bows, five days ago,’ the National Security Adviser chipped in.
‘Indeed, Zara, yes, that one,’ Crosland continued. ‘Now, we’ve had strong messages of support from Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but for now they’re staying out of this. Keeping their heads down. So, the question we have to address in this room is how do we respond?’
‘Weakness.’
‘Excuse me?’ All eyes turned to the National Security Adviser.
‘Weakness and hesitation,’ Zara Simmons said. ‘That’s what Moscow and Beijing will be looking for. The Kremlin knows full well they managed to spook us into not sending enough kit to Ukraine in 2023 until it was so late their summer counter-offensive flopped. They’re looking to bully us into making exactly the same mistake now and abandoning Taiwan to its fate.’
‘Hold on a minute there, Zara.’ Hugh Rawlinson, the Foreign Secretary. ‘The stakes are rather different now, wouldn’t you say?’
‘All the more reason for us to show strength,’ she retorted. ‘I would propose we send the Queen Elizabeth to theatre with a full complement of F35s onboard. It will show our adversaries we’re serious. Plus, it shows we’re in absolute lockstep with the Americans.’
‘Forgive me,’ the Foreign Secretary again, ‘but I thought our only serviceable aircraft carrier was holed up in dock somewhere in the Gulf.’ His brow was furrowed with doubt as he regarded the young and ambitious National Security Adviser. ‘For a start, how long is it going to take to get her out to theatre?’
‘Let me address that, if I may,’ interjected Admiral Seaton, the First Sea Lord. ‘She’s currently in Jebel Ali, yes, but with a bit of elbow grease we’re confident she could be under way within thirty-six hours. The Taiwan Strait is six thousand nautical miles from the Gulf, so, at a rate of twenty knots once she’s in open ocean, that should have her in position in …’ He shuffled through his notes to check his figures. ‘… fourteen days. There you are. It’s fourteen days, give or take.’
‘Two weeks!’ It was the PM this time. ‘Christ, it’ll all be over by then.’
Someone down the table was clearing their throat rather deliberately. The Attorney General, Priyanka Varma, was there to provide the legal checks and balances. ‘Yes, Pri?’ The PM swivelled in his chair to face her. ‘You wanted to add something?’
‘Well, yes, I do. I’m concerned we’re rather rushing into things.’ She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him, a silent question mark, but when he didn’t respond she went on. ‘Let’s look at this in the cold light of day, shall we? You are talking about ordering our flagship naval asset with, what, a ship’s company of a thousand, two thousand, into a potential war zone? And we’re not talking about lightly armed insurgents in the Middle East. This is China and Russia, two permanent members of the UN Security Council with a combined nuclear arsenal in excess of six thousand warheads. China alone has the largest army and the second-largest economy in the world. It’s a country bristling with missiles. Have we got Parliamentary backing for this? No. Have we got the country behind us? Well, you tell me, Prime Minister.’
There was a long and meaningful silence. Priyanka Varma was almost the only member of Cabinet who could get away with speaking to the PM like that, but it was well known they had been friends at Oxford.
‘Look,’ she continued, softening her tone somewhat, ‘I’m not quibbling with the moral dimension here. Taiwan is a pro-Western democracy that deserves our help. It’s a small country, vital to our supply chain, being threatened by a big one, I get that. But going to war on the other side of the world without Parliamentary approval? I’m sorry, PM, but I think you’ll have to put your case to the vote.’
Someone muttered very quietly, ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ It might have been the Defence Secretary; it might have been the Chief of Defence Staff. But whoever it was, the PM chose to ignore it.
‘I hear you, Pri,’ he said at last. ‘And what if we go ahead without a vote?’
‘Then I can’t protect you,’ she said flatly. ‘I can’t do my job.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning if you decide to take this country to war with China without putting it to the House first, I will have no choice. I will have to resign.’