The former head of the UK’s civil service has described the Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “dictator” and said Donald Trump had put “helpful pressure” on Europe to increase defence spending.
Simon Case, who served as the cabinet secretary until December, when he stepped down on health grounds, said China had sent a clear message to “prepare for serious conflict” in Taiwan.
The UK has committed to spend the equivalent of 2.6% of GDP in 2027, and it and other Nato members have signed up to increasing spending to 5% by 2035 on militaries and related security.
The increased defence spending came after years of Trump raising questions over the future of the Nato alliance – and whether the US would come to allies’ defence – if other countries did not increase spending.
Case argued for the UK and mainland Europe to increase the pace of increased defence spending. He was speaking at an event in London paid for by Britain’s biggest weapons maker, BAE Systems. The manufacturer of artillery, fighter jets and nuclear submarines is expected to be one of the biggest corporate beneficiaries of increased spending on weaponry.
Case said: “There’s some actually quite helpful pressure, if you ask me – [this is a] slightly unpopular view – from the White House about us pulling our fingers out in Europe and actually stepping up to the plate on our defence spending.
“But the reason that matters is because President Xi has publicly set out his timetable for, as he would put it, reunifying Taiwan. We’re incredibly bad at reading what dictators say in public. We spend millions of pounds on secret intelligence, which is absolutely amazing, but we’re really bad at missing what they actually say in public, which is, this is the timetable at which I want everybody to be ready for us to prepare for serious conflict.”
Xi exercises near absolute power in China, but the country has strongly objected to the use of the label “dictator”, including by the former US president Joe Biden. The UK’s recent strategic defence review highlighted Chinese military exercises around Taiwan as a driver of global instability.
Case also raised the threat of Russia starting further conflicts in Europe, beyond Ukraine.
In February Case took over as the chair of the government-funded “Team Barrow”, which is described as a “partnership between the government, Westmorland and Furness council, and BAE Systems” to support the local economy, which is heavily dependent on BAE’s nuclear submarine shipyard.
