Sir Keir Starmer revives weekly National Security Council meetings

Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister is holding weekly meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) for the first time in years.

I have learned that it meets every week after cabinet for a full hour, chaired by Starmer, having met more sporadically and infrequently when Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were prime ministers.

A senior security source said: “Boris Johnson wasn’t keen on having meetings and Sunak wasn’t desperately interested in foreign policy.

"We’ve all been recommending Starmer should hold meetings on a much more regular basis and put the NSC back at the heart of assessing risk to our security and the big foreign policy challenges."

Another said: “Under Johnson it met about once a month and he would frequently cancel them at short notice. It was frustrating."

The NSC is now meeting at lunchtime on Tuesdays on a weekly cycle. When it was set up by David Cameron in 2010 it met weekly, in the early afternoon.

It was created in response to criticism that under Tony Blair the big foreign policy, defence and security decision were taken by Blair too informally by what was known as “sofa” government.

A colleague of Cameron recalls how important the meetings were to him.

Attending Starmer’s NSC are the foreign, defence and home secretaries, the chancellor, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the heads of Mi5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, the head of the armed forces, the chair of the joint intelligence committee, Starmer’s chief of staff and the national security adviser, among others.

Have you heard our podcast Talking Politics? Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda in every episode…