UK must be ready for war in 1000 days says Streeting

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has warned that Britain’s ‘adversaries’ could be ready to attack by 2030.

His warning comes after Prime Minister Andy Burnham told citizens to stock up on tinned food and bottled water for emergencies.

Streeting wrote in The Telegraph: ‘Our adversaries’ willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity.

‘By 2030 their force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack.

‘That gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win.’

He said we had to prepare to ‘prevent the worst’, referencing Russia’s potential ‘state-sponsored terrorism’.

Britons have been urged to prepare for emergencies by stocking up on nine litres of bottled water and three days of food.

Streeting continued: ‘In the face of those threats, which are not hypothetical but real, and not somewhere else but increasingly here, we have to step up and take seriously our national resilience as well as our national defence.

‘It’s really important that we ask households and businesses are they prepared?’

Along with tinned food and water, people have been told to keep blankets, cash, first aid kits, and a wind-up FM radio.

Burnham previously told the BBC: ‘It’s not about panicking…It’s about just taking sensible measures to have enough in the house to tide you over should there be a difficult situation.’

Last month, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned Britain’s food supply chain is at risk, due to growing threats of cyber attacks and the climate crisis.

It accused the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) for not doing enough to improve supply chain resilience.

Burnham responded to this claim, saying: ‘We’re having the conversation with people about being better prepared because we’re living in a world where unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common.

‘Obviously, weather events, and we’re in a situation today where the UK is facing storms and obviously, we feel for the people without power in Cornwall right now.

‘It is just having those supplies in the house to get you through those moments. So we are having that conversation about resilience.’

The government has also suggested hand sanitiser, pet food, and wet wipes for stockpiling lists.

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