MEZIESBLOG

Former defence secretary Grant Shapps is launching a report from the Coalition for Global Prosperity, for which he has written the foreword, and he tells Sophy Ridge that it echoes comments he made from a year ago – that we are going from a post-war to a pre-war era.

He says that “not because I think we’re about to immediately go to war”, but adds: “If we don’t watch it, if we don’t get serious about defence and making sure that the world remains stable, we’ll live to regret it.”

Mr Shapps goes on to say that Britain should be “more active in the world”, and how we use development budgets is “hugely important to making sure that problems don’t just, frankly, come home to roost”.

US president Donald Trump has called on NATO allies to spend 5% of GDP on defence – up from the 2.5% target – and Sophy Ridge asks the former defence secretary if that is realistic.

He replies: “First of all, we didn’t actually spend 5% during the Cold War. I think I was looking at 1984. I think it peaked at about 4.7%, off the top of my head.

“But I do agree with him. We should be spending a lot more.”

He goes on to say he “fought tooth and nail” when he was in government to increase defence spending, and that he won that battle with former PM Rishi Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

Mr Shapps labels claims from Labour that their spending plans were not realistic as “complete and utter nonsense”, saying: “To govern is to choose. We chose that defence was the thing [to spend on].”

He adds: “I can tell you right now that there are cuts going on in the [Ministry of Defence] that are putting this country at risk, and this government is culpable of allowing that to happen.”

‘We always knew AI would get cheaper’, says former defence secretary

Next with former defence secretary Grant Shapps, we turn to AI and the apparently emerging geopolitical struggle between the US and China on developing the technology.

Mr Shapps tells Sophy Ridge that AI is going to “absolutely fundamentally change everything”, comparing it the development of the internet “times 10”.

Turning to the emergence of the vastly cheaper AI learning model by Chinese company Deepseek, the former defence secretary says it raised questions in the market about whether so much money needs to be invested in the infrastructure for it.

But he says that “we’ve always known it’s going to come down in price”, and the markets “overreact[ed]”, and has corrected a bit today.

The “more worrying” element of it is that this Chinese model appears to be censored by not having responses to questions about Tiananmen Square, for example.