Duck and cover

The UK Government Resilence Action Plan (RAP) 2026 was published on 14th July so why are we only hearing about it now?

I consider myself fairly switched-on and tuned-in but I don't recall hearing about this before and yet, today, the press and media are full of advice on stocking-up at least 72 hours'-worth of basic essentials such as bottled water, tinned food, a first-aid kit, candles and battery powered torches and radios in case of a national emergency. Could it be that the month's delay has been due to the changeover of Prime Ministers? I think the game is given away by the strap-line on the Cabinet Office report to be found on the UK.Gov website: "This was published under the 2024 to 2026 Starmer Labour government".

So during the past month, while parliament has been in recess and Labour has been rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, we, the British people, have been kept in the dark, effectively left to fend for ourselves as potentially existential international events swirl about us? The announcement now is supposedly prompted by the climate crisis manifesting itself in drought, wild fires and potential food shortages. These are obviously serious considerations but I suspect the real reason for the sudden focus on the issue a month after the report was first published is the very real fear in government circles that Vladimir Putin might actually be about to go rogue (or roguer) and launch a wave of cyber, drone and sabotage attacks on the UK. In other words, we have moved from a de facto to a de jure war footing.

All this evokes a strong sense of deja vu in me. As a kid growing up in rural Yorkshire in the 1960s, the nearest neighbour to our house was a pub down the lane - not even really a village pub as we were basically a widely scattered collection of farmsteads, but a community hub nonetheless. This being the case, the landlord was called upon to sound a siren for a test run of the four-minute warning of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union (and, presumably, in the event of the real thing).  The memory of that haunting klaxon's wail echoing round the valley, a sound only previously known to me from WWII films and documentaries shown on TV, evokes a frisson to this day. But it wasn't clear how we were supposed to react to the test, or in the event of an actual attack, except not to panic. As we lived within a mile of a major US military base, this was probably an academic consideration anyway as we would have taken a direct hit. (It was only years later, on finally seeing the suppressed Peter Watkins 1965 BBC film, The War Game, that the full horror of what we might have faced in such an eventuality became clear.)

Sixty years on, our government seems, belatedly, to have woken up to the necessity of warning a supine populace of the urgent need to prepare for the worst. As in the 1960s, when taking shelter under the kitchen table was meant to protect us against the dropping of an H-bomb, I suspect this will amount to an entirely performative exercise in persuading us of the wisdom of hoarding a few bottles of water and cans of baked beans just in case. Quite apart from the fact that a significant number of Brits barely have the resources to shop for one day, let alone stock up for three days or more, how are we supposed to survive the impending (non-nuclear) winter without electricity, gas or water, much less aggressive enemy actions? It's clearly a nonsense given the scale of the environmental and political crises facing the UK but I guess we must wait for parliament to return from its summer recess on 1st September to find out more.

Let's just hope Putin doesn't launch an attack before next Tuesday.

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