Councillor Noel Hadjimichael stepped forward to open the evening. My name is Councillor Noel Hadjimichael. I am the chair of the Defence and Security Circle here at the club, he said. The National Liberal Club is the heart of British liberalism, but the Defence and Security Circle is everyone on Team GB. He explained that members came from every major political party, from the civil service, from the private and non profit sectors. His voice carried a clear sense of ritual as he noted that this was the one hundred and fifty ninth event in five and a half years and that the overriding theme of their gatherings was the United Kingdom national interest.

Before the speakers began he offered instructions familiar to anyone accustomed to Westminster committee rooms. Please please please turn your phones to dead, to stunned, to silent, he said. The bar would reopen in an hour. They had the room until half past eight. Make new friends tonight, but for the next hour listen think and finally vote.

He introduced the chair of the debate as the most powerful of the seven at the front. Zagham Farhan rose with a half smile that suggested equal measures of affection and mischief. Thank you Noel, he said. I was once upon a time president of the Oxford Liberal Democrats. I am going to be chairing tonight. I am also the secretary of the Liberal Democrat Friends of the Armed Forces, so I am going to be chairing this debate with the neutrality of a member of the Royal Opposition this evening.

Farhan gestured around the room and spoke warmly of the club that had hosted them several times before. I love this place, he said, because at the top of the stairs is a photo of Dadabhai Naoroji, who was elected to the House of Commons in 1892, and I think that says something very very special about our country and this club, that someone who looks like me was able to be in the Parliament a few kilometres down the road one hundred and fifty years ago. I think that is very very special.

He then outlined the rules. Eight minute speeches. No interventions in the first or last minute. In the six minutes between, audience members could rise and call P O I2, waiting for permission to continue. Keep them short, he warned. Ten words perhaps. Please do not give a speech of your own. A gavel rested on the floor if needed. At the end of the night, a vote of thanks would come from Jennifer Schwarzenberg, vice chair of the circle.

With the room attentive, Farhan introduced the opening speaker. The Right Honourable Lord Newby, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords until very recently, former government deputy chief whip, and honorary chair of Oxford Students Liberal Association, stood to make the case for the proposition that this House believes defence should be the national priority.

Thank you Chair, Lord Newby began. At one level, this is a pointless debate. Because it is a political truism, accepted by all parties, that the security and defence of the country is always at the centre of its concerns, and its top priority. Yet he said that Britain had behaved otherwise for most of his lifetime, steadily reducing defence spending from a high point he placed at 52 per cent of GDP in 1945 to 13 per cent in 1953 and to 5.8 per cent a decade later. By 1993 it had fallen to 3.5 per cent. In 2023 it was a mere 2.1 per cent.

As demands for health education and pensions grew, governments had treated defence as expendable, the peace dividend that they eagerly spent. He said this had been the prevailing consensus with only senior military figures dissenting and that their warnings had been dismissed as special pleading.

That world, he said, no longer existed. The new Strategic Defence Review declared that the United Kingdom was already under attack from espionage cyber intrusion and information manipulation. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea were named as principal offenders. The war in Ukraine, fought on the European doorstep, had made this threat visible. At the same time, Lord Newby said, the United States administration had made it clear that for the first time in eighty years Europe could not rely on Washington to fund its defence.

He turned to technology with the precision of someone accustomed to committee briefings. We have seen how drones, considered of little use in battle at all a few years ago, are now dominating the fighting in Ukraine, he said. Cyber attacks, unheard of a decade ago, are now an everyday threat. Artificial intelligence was transforming military decision making.

He mocked the belief under Boris Johnson that Britain could pivot to the east and act as a global naval presence. That was delusional, he said. The United Kingdom did not have those resources. A NATO first focus on Europe was not only wiser but essential.

Yet the challenge was not simply external. Procurement itself had been defective for years. As a warning he pointed to an armoured vehicle programme that was eight years late and hundreds of millions of pounds over budget. If Britain was to spend more on defence, it had to do so competently.

But the core difficulty, he said, would be persuading the public that higher defence spending was necessary when other services were stretched and trust in government was low. Many threats were intangible and unseen. Yet it was imperative for the public to accept the reality of them. Defence must be a national priority. As citizens we now need to accept it and also accept the consequences.

When he sat down the room shifted to the opposition side where Owen Wilson rose. He had been introduced earlier as secretary from Warwick and now he opened with a clear rejection of the premise. Not only do I not think that defence should be the national priority, I do not even think that it should be the priority in protecting British interests, he said.

He reminded the room that Britain was projected to spend 60 point 2 billion pounds on defence this year. What do we really get for that, he asked. This country no longer has a British army standing by that regularly goes into a conflict and fights for so called Western social value democracy and liberty. Iraq and Afghanistan had shown that Britain could no longer dictate world events by force.

He turned to the promises already made. Committing to 2 point 5 per cent of national income on defence by 2027 and later 3 per cent struck him as a poor allocation of limited resources. Better avenues existed to advance British interests.

The most obvious, he said, was soft power. An obvious example to bring up in the context of this week is the BBC, he said. We have an American president now threatening to sue our public broadcaster. According to YouGov the BBC is the second most trusted news organisation in America, only after the Weather Channel. There was laughter in the room. Through the BBC World Service, he continued, it reaches 450 million people weekly and is ranked first for reliability among international news providers.

In a landscape where misinformation was widespread, especially from the United States president whom he described as constantly lying, the BBC provided a counterweight. In many countries where impartial news was impossible to access, the World Service offered a more objective view. And for all this influence its cost was modest. The World Service cost the government 137 million pounds. The licence fee was 3 point 66 billion. All of it dwarfed by the 60 billion spent on defence.

When pressed from the floor about the value of defence related trade such as British aircraft sales to Turkey, Wilson acknowledged that such ventures had benefits. But the question before them, he said, was priority. He argued instead for international development, criticising the government plan to reduce aid from 0 point 5 per cent of national income to 0 point 3 per cent by 2027 in order to help fund increased defence spending. Have we not got a moral duty as a leading Western nation to promote our values not just by force, but by funding the fight against AIDS tuberculosis and malaria, but on water sanitation and education, he asked.

Wilson then turned to geopolitics. Africa would account for a large share of global population growth by the end of the century. If Britain wanted influence there, it would achieve it through aid education and stable institutions. Age provides a better value for money breakdown, he said. Britain would grow less relevant if it abandoned this space.

He then invoked another instrument of soft power. The monarchy costs 132 point 1 million pounds through the sovereign grant, he said. But when one included the Crown Estate and the wider economic gains from royal diplomacy it might be a net benefit. Our commitment to higher defence may lead to current American tensions today, but you never see pacified, he said. The monarchy on the other hand is something we have got again and again without too much expense.

He closed by turning to universities. According to a report from February this year, 50 world leaders went to universities in the United Kingdom, he said. Heads of state and government possessed a sense of respect towards this country by merit of that education. On this measure Britain was ahead even of the United States. Yet universities were financially vulnerable. Should the government not protect them rather than attack them through fee regimes, he asked. Our universities are driving our service based economy and maintaining British influence through well trained elites, he said. For every penny invested inside a university Britain makes a tangible gain. The state could not always say the same of expanded defence budgets. Therefore the idea that defence should be the national priority, he said, belonged to another era.

The debate then returned to the proposition benches where Teo Sevgen spoke in a separate capacity from his earlier institutional introduction. He began by acknowledging the threats from foreign authoritarianism but insisted that the deeper danger came from discontent at home. People are dissatisfied with how this country is going, he said. They feel poorer. They feel they do not have as much material goods as they used to. Polling had shown that a fifth of young adults preferred dictatorship to democracy. Support for Reform UK hovered near 31 per cent in some surveys. Demagogues would thrive, he said, if people saw their own services cut in order to send money abroad. While he believed supporting Ukraine was vital, he feared that domestic hardship would fuel hostility to international commitments.

From the floor a member asked whether better communication could help, suggesting a commissioner for rearmament and resilience. Sevgen replied cautiously. Yes I agree, he said. But he doubted that reframing would solve the core problem. Another questioner asked if Britain should buy cheaper Russian oil to fund domestic services. He rejected the idea outright. That would fund the war effort of an autocratic dictator, he said. Instead Britain should invest in new energy sources at home.

He argued that Russian information campaigns succeeded only when they exploited existing grievances. If these bots are saying the country is going to pot, we need to think, why do people think the country is going to pot if they do not listen to them, he said. The answer in his view was repeated. It was because their lives were getting worse. And that could be changed only through investment in public services. National defence should be a focus, he concluded. But it should not absolutely not be the priority.

A later proposition voice, Theo Cunningham from Oxford, rose with a different tone. Distinguished guests, he began. I think it is clear that the world is changing. He said the earlier speakers had asked the right questions. What does this look like. Where is this money being spent. What are the threats. And why are we spending it. He argued that in the United Kingdom economy stability depended on the reliability of global systems. Britain was the biggest net importer aside from the United States. That means that we rely on other countries more than anyone else in terms of value for our economy to continue, he said. We cannot survive in isolation.

He pointed to the speed of technological change. The United States and China were spending hundreds of billions. Russia was attacking the United Kingdom online and damaging underwater cables. It is clear that Russia are infringing on the UK capacity to survive, he said. They are attacking us online.

An opposition voice challenged him on corruption in defence procurement. How can you say that we need defence spending when we have got huge contracts that are deeply inefficient or completely corrupt, the questioner asked. Cunningham replied. At the point where you prioritise these things, because you put more effort into getting a good contract, he said. And he argued that new technologies discovered for defence often diffused into civilian life. Presumably the iPhone is a consumer good, he said. It required a lot of technology to get made.

He acknowledged the importance of soft power but said it depended on security. No one on his side wanted to destroy the BBC, he said. But money had to come from somewhere, perhaps uncomfortable options like higher income tax. The question was stability. If defence spending increased stability, he said, the markets would likely accept it.

He ended with a question. What does this country look like in twenty years, and how do we secure that future. If you think that this country faces threats that all speakers have acknowledged, then you probably have to think that we have to do something about these threats, he said. For these reasons, I am very proud to say you should vote for the motion.

The final speech came from Jack Peters of Cambridge for the opposition. He began by complimenting the earlier speakers and then turned to economic fundamentals. Strength, he said, came not from military budgets alone but from a thriving economy, innovation and capable civil institutions. He criticised what he called the Roman maxim3 invoked implicitly by the proposition. If you want peace, prepare for war. That world, he said, no longer existed. The modern world was defined by a global system of capitalism, free trade and institutional expectations that citizens had for welfare and freedom.

Within that settlement, he argued, the postwar decades had seen rising prosperity and a decline in war deaths. Defence did not exist separately from these foundations. Defence exists on these pillars, he said. These are pillars of modernity. These are pillars of the post war world economy.

In prioritising defence he warned that Britain would actively take money away from the forces that enabled long term security. Raising income taxes without regard for innovation would undermine the very industries defence depended on. Spending more now meant weakening the future base.

He then reached for historical cases. The Soviet Union spent 12 to 17 per cent of its GDP on defence. What did that do, he asked. It drove economic stagnation and left the state unable to sustain its military. Similarly, he contrasted North Korea and South Korea. The latter prioritised growth and ended up with one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world. A questioner reminded him that South Korea had also faced dictatorship and defence pressures. Peters replied that the principle remained. South Korea recognised the threat and invested in growth because it recognised the threat.

He closed by clarifying his stance. This is not saying we should be cutting defence spending, he said. What we are saying is you have to understand what enables defence spending in the first place. And that cannot be suddenly removed.

When the last speech ended Farhan reached again for the gavel and called the room to order. A vote of thanks followed from Jennifer Schwarzenberg, who praised the range of ideas and spoke of the tension between insurance protection preservation and immediate stability. She thanked the speakers for bringing the room on that journey and added with a smile, as an American, thank you to the Weather Channel.

Then came the count. I have a result, how exciting, Farhan said. For the proposition 29 and for the opposition 31. The opposition has it. A ripple of applause ran through the room. Twenty people had not voted at all.

Hadjimichael returned to close the evening. This is a gentle advertisement, he said. There is a bar over there. It will be open for some time. He invited guests to stay or to depart safely to trains buses or what he called their carriages. Every one of the eighty two people in this room has a home at the Defence and Security Circle, he added. He reminded them that on 24 November they would hold their one hundred and sixtieth event, a Situation Room discussion with the Gunpowder Chronicles. Be part of the conversation here at the National Liberal Club, he said. You are more than welcome.

The audience drifted towards the bar and the staircase. The portraits remained where they had always been, presiding over another debate in a building that had watched British politics for more than a century. The vote had been close. The arguments were unresolved. But the question of how Britain balances strained services, fraying global alliances and an increasingly dangerous technological battlefield lingered in the air long after the chairs were stacked and the room finally emptied.

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Reserve Your Spot Now

The Balkans are once again at a crossroads. With weapons caches uncovered in northern Kosovo and Europe’s uneasy stance toward Serbia under scrutiny, the question is urgent:

This House believes that the Banjska attack in the Republic of Kosovo on September 24, 2023, is direct proof that Europe’s support for Serbia undermines democracy and security in the region.

This inaugural Situation Room debate will test that claim in a format unlike any other: sharp, adversarial, and grounded in evidence.

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One year after Serbia’s brazen attempt to annex northern Kosovo in a Kremlin-inspired operation, the situation in the Western Balkans has deteriorated further. The Serbian state, emboldened by Western appeasement and free from accountability, has openly embraced the toxic influence of Russia, China, and Iran, dragging the region deeper into instability. As of September 24, 2024, Serbia now…

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What to Expect

• 🎙 Expert voices: Diplomats, academics, and practitioners with deep Balkan experience.

• 🗳 Audience power: Vote before and after to track persuasion shifts.

• ⚡ Dynamic debate: No long speeches, just clarity, rebuttal, and pressure.

• 🌍 Context that matters: Every debate begins with a crisis briefing.

• 🤝 Engagement: Network with thinkers, journalists, policymakers, and peers.

Speakers

• Dr. Aidan Hehir: Reader in International Relations, University of Westminster

• Ian Cameron Cliff, OBE: Former British Ambassador to Bosnia, Sudan, Kosovo, and Croatia

• Ilir Kapiti: Ambassador of the Republic of Kosovo to the UK

• Vudi Xhymshiti: Founder & Editor-in-Chief, The Gunpowder Chronicles

Moderator: Michael Sheppard, London Editor, The Gunpowder Chronicles

This is not a lecture. It’s an intelligence chamber where diplomacy, strategy, and accountability are stress-tested in real time.

⚠️ Only 60 seats are available. Once the chamber closes, it closes.

👉 Secure your place today and share this event with colleagues, students, and peers who care about Europe’s future.

Reserve a Spot

Arguments are weighed on evidence, not personalities. Opposing views are engaged, not ignored. Every voice matters, with time discipline ensuring fairness and the audience empowered to challenge, question, and decide. On 24 September 2025, these principles will come alive as we host our very first debate, opening a space where ideas, not egos, lead the way.

Principles of the Room

• Respect & Civility → Arguments, not personalities.

• Clarity → Positions stated upfront, evidence over rhetoric.

• Rebuttal → Engagement with opposing views, not repetition.

• Time Discipline → No filibustering, no drift; every voice has weight.

• Audience Power → Questions, challenges, and votes shape the outcome.

Our First Debate

On 24 September 2025, the inaugural motion will test a pressing question:

“This House believes that. … led to the. … in the, undermining peace, security and democracy.