Nigel Farage has branded Russia as the greatest threat to UK security, accusing the country of waging a hybrid war on Britain. The Reform UK leader said Moscow was targeting vital undersea cables and carrying out cyber-security attacks and espionage.
Reform's First National Security Review
A new review, led by the party's armed forces spokesman Angus MacIntyre, will be co-ordinated with military, intelligence and diplomatic experts. It intends to lay out how the country will defend itself under a Reform government in what the party claims will be the most comprehensive review of its kind.
Mr Farage said: "Britain is heading towards defencelessness. Our armed forces have been gutted, our nuclear deterrent is creaking, and our borders are wide open."
He added: "The man charged with securing our defences has no military experience whatsoever. The Chancellor won't even give him the resources our brave troops need to protect us either."
Threats from Russia, Iran and China
Mr Farage continued: "Unlike the old parties, we are clear-eyed about the threats from Russia, Iran, China and the rising threat from Islamist extremists. And, unlike Andy Burnham, we'll secure our borders and give our armed forces the funding they need now."
Mr MacIntyre said: "In my service of 40 years in His Majesty's armed forces, my career took me from the 17th/21st Lancers to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 3 Commando Brigade, the 5th Airborne Brigade and finally the RAF Regiment."
He added: "I am proud to be conducting Reform's landmark first national security review. The threats our country faces are stark, and I will never flinch from confronting them."
Focus on Borders and Alliances
Reform's review will focus on ensuring that the country's borders are protected, as well as maintaining British alliances, which it says must be practical, not performative. It also turns both barrels on the mullahs of Tehran, branding them as the world's "largest state-sponsor of terrorism".
China, it warns, is a "tyrannical regime bent on the domination of the world", and alongside Iran and Russia represent "fundamental threats to the security of the West".
Richard Williams, former commanding officer of the SAS, said: "This is the right approach. Start with the things we have to do – homeland defence, the Euro-Atlantic, national cohesion – and build from there. It's good to see a political party prepared to give a strong lead on national security."
Dr Rob Johnson, senior research fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre, Oxford University, who devised the 2025 War Game podcast on Sky News, said: "Reform UK are right to say that we can't go on like this. Few realise the seriousness of the threats we face to our infrastructure, our security, and the integrity of our political and social lives."
He added: "The existing approach, and the system we have used, has failed. No more window dressing and reassuring platitudes. We need a fresh look, and we need the delivery of real reform."
Ameer Kotecha, chief executive of the Centre for Government Reform and formerly a senior British diplomat who headed the British Consulate in Russia from 2023-25, said: "Our foreign policy has lost sight of the national interest. Instead, it has come to increasingly resemble a series of progressive crusades to virtue-signal on the international stage. These eight highly sensible principles are exactly the sort of thinking we need to course-correct and put our foreign and security policy back on the right track."
Labour insists it is investing heavily in the nation's defence with the largest funding uplift since the Cold War.
