Question Time Ukraine Special, 20th February 2025
The Panel:
General Sir Nicholas Carter (Former Chief of Defence Staff)
Lesia Vasylenko (Ukrainian MP)
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour)
Sir Ben Wallace (Conservative)
Jan Halper-Hayes (Trump Advisor)
Venue: London, Kilburn
As is the fashion in the round-ball game these days, my Local XI has been taken over by moneybags overseas owners. Amongst the euphoria at the departure of an underachieving board – consisting of the provincial butcher, baker, and candlestick maker (de-bagged and thrown into the village pond as signatures dried) — a cautionary voice called from the sidelines.
Sport is important for its own sake but also as it holds lessons about the real world that lies beyond the triviality of kicking a ball about.
The Donald is (most of the time) well regarded on these pages, not least by this modest reviewer of unwatched panel shows. However, as fresh-faced Mario Rubio and Mr Trump amble into the bear pit with Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov, one is obliged to repeat a comment made as the new owners of our wendyball team rolled into town.
While observing a Cadillac full of smiles, commitments, hairpieces, optimistic promises, expensive teeth and all the right uttered clichés, a chap in a cloth cap, Bovril in hand, standing at the back of a wind-blown terrace muttered, ‘I hope they know what they’re doing.’
***
Like two old girls being pimped, Nick Carter and Ben Wallace (not their real names; General Sir Nicholas Patrick Carter, GCB, CBE, DSO, and Sir Robert Ben Lobban Wallace, KCB) sit behind the Question Time desk.
After serving as a captain in the Scots Guards, Sir Ben entered politics, first as a Conservative MSP and then as an MP, rising to be Boris Johnson’s Minister of Defence — a role he continued under Mrs Truss and Mr Sunak.
Encouraged by colleagues to stand as leader of the Conservatives, Wallace had different plans. Rather than serve his party and country, he preferred to serve himself. Stepping down from his ministry in August 2023, the 54-year-old left the House of Commons at the 2024 general election. Upon leaving the MoD, he began to cash in. According to his parliamentary declarations available via TheyWorkForYou, within weeks and in between £2,000 a time articles for the Telegraph, he received £12,000 to deliver a speech on behalf of Lakestar Investors of 18 Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich.
Puffins will be delighted to hear that a month later, he received £50,000 from N.M. Rothschilds for another gig. £19,000 followed from globalists ‘This is Spoken’ — a creative agency which ‘sits at the nexus of the world’s greatest thinkers and companies.’ Also, Julius Baer, a notorious private Swiss bank. A similar sum was paid by another private bank called Pictet. Citizens of the US or Canada will be disappointed to read that the Swiss-based multinational is unable to provide them with financial services. The regulatory framework within those countries and the possibility of litigation through US and Canadian courts keeps honest Pictet this side of the Atlantic.
Sir Ben’s fellow floozy in a backstreet shop window is General Sir Nicholas Carter, these days amongst other things an advisor to the Tony Blair Institute. Educated at Winchester and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Carter was commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets and rose to be Chief of Defence Staff from June 2018 to November 2021. Keen on hybrid warfare and unenthusiastic about tanks and heavy artillery, Carter’s ‘Strike’ strategy of fast-moving, lightly armoured mobile units has been undone by the réalité of the war in eastern Ukraine. More of which later.
***
As for the venue, the local Kilburn MP is Labour’s Tulip Siddiq who recently had to resign after misleading the House over an anti-corruption investigation in her native Bangladesh. Tulip’s aunty is Sheikh Hasina, the recently deposed former prime minister of that country. Interestingly, Tulip is pictured here with Putin in a photograph taken after the present conflict in the Ukraine began in 2014.
Neighbouring her constituency is Holborn and St Pancras, where the sitting MP is Prime Minister Keith Starmer. Interestingly, at the 2024 general election, Keith saw his share of the vote drop by 17% as a ‘pro-Palestine’ candidate took a lump out of his support. Perhaps what’s left of the tanks and artillery should be shelling Londonistan?
***
Question one, President Trump says Zelensky started the war in Ukraine. Does Donald prefer Putin to his Western allies?
Trump is action-orientated, began Jan Halper-Hayes. She continued that his overall objective is for Russia to leave Ukraine. Having Zelensky in the room in Saudi Arabia would be one person too many. Trump deals in optics. He floats ideas. Did Ukraine start the war, queried La Bruce. Trump takes the opposite view to Biden, Jen replied, he gets people to think. The threat of NATO expansion into Ukraine is significant.
It was unprovoked, began Lesia, and the war started in 2014 not three years ago. The USA is the important strategic partner and Trump’s position is making life difficult.
Ben Wallace suggested that Trump doesn’t prefer Putin and knows who Putin is, but what Trump doesn’t understand is the ripple effect of his comments. Tehran, Beijing and Moscow hear this disrespect for sovereign territory and take from it encouragement for their own ambitions.
He rattled through a series of Russian human rights abuses, some of which such as murdering journalists, can be aimed at his paymasters.
One of Mr Wallace’s final acts as Defence Secretary was to sign an agreement with the Saudi Arabian government ‘to further cooperate on defence and continue a decades-long combat air relationship.’ The following year, the Millfield old boy (£60,000 per annum) became a lobbyist with CTRD who, according to The Guardian newspaper, ‘work with the Saudi government on reform, governance, and security.’
He also took a position at BOKA, a US/British security and defence company which, on their website, claims: ‘Western democracy depends upon fortification against our adversaries. We secure the future by investing in growing protective technologies in several areas, including defence, national security, and cyber security.’
When Mr Wallace tweets that we ‘must hit Iran hard’, is he doing so on behalf of this country or for his Arab paymasters on the other side of the Persian Gulf to their rivals in Iran?
La Bruce focused on Donald’s dictator comments. Jan responded by blaming his hostility towards Zelensky on missing military aid money.
Not for the first time, QT had become the Donald Show and bogged down in assuming a panellist, in this case Jan, was able to read his mind.
Sir Nick Carter was feeling uncomfortable. The only thing worse than fighting alongside allies is fighting without them. The Donald needs to be educated as he doesn’t understand the history. No NATO membership, no American boots on the ground, Russia keeping occupied territory, Donald’s bargaining chips have been played before the negotiations even start.
Mr Nick Symonds announced this was a once-in-a-generation, future of our continent happening. We will continue to support Ukraine, what we don’t want is a tactical truce which means Putin will come back later.
Question two. What does a fair and just peace look like for Ukraine?
Back to 1991 borders said Lesia with a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. The 1991 border being the old Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. At the moment, Russia occupies about 20% of the land, which is equivalent to about half of the area of the UK. She said all of those people [even the Russians living in the South East?] want to live under the Ukrainian flag. Without being corrected from the chair, she was lazily optimistic (or dishonest) about what Ukranine was like before the invasion.
La Bruce asked Ben Wallace about a realistic loss of territory. Ben insisted he wouldn’t tell Ukraine what to want.
A loon in the audience blamed Brexit.
La Bruce asked the Ukrainians in the audience if they would give territory to the Russians in return for peace. None of them would but all of them are thousands of miles away from the meat grinder.
General Nick agreed with Ben. It’s up to the Ukrainians but there was a minimum position that needed to be stated in advance of negotiations. That would be a copper-bottomed guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty but not like the Budapest agreement, a previous meaningless copper-bottomed guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty.
Jan thought if you want permanent peace, you might make notes while watching ‘The Human Factor’, a documentary that shows how Rabin and Arafat brought permanent peace to the Holy Land. Oh. Adding to the naivety, she thought Crimea would stay with Russia, but Donbas and Luhansk would be given back to Kiev – unlikely, given the sacrifice made by Russia to capture them.
Mr Nick rambled, promising support from us – which is not sufficient to do much – while letting the Ukrainians decide for themselves while being stamped on by the Russians and abandoned by the Americans. We would play our part in any guarantee, but this would require US involvement as a backstop.
The next question was about extra defence spending. Where’s the money coming from, wondered La Bruce. Nick Carter, if anybody knows the state of our armed forces, it should be you.
The armed forces are hollow following a process of neglect over 30 years, said Sir Nick. We need to digitise. He seemed to be more concerned about data in cables than about being shelled by the Ruskies.
Not existing in a vacuum, Sir Nick’s ‘Strike’ strategy resulted in fighting vehicle upgrades being scrapped and replaced with orders for light-armed transport vehicles, which would place our forces at a huge disadvantage if (when?) pitched against the Russians in a meat grinder.
After retiring as Chief of Defence Staff, Carter also entered lobbying. Initially, he ‘took up a role’, then acquired a stake in and became chairman of Equilibrium, a consulting firm active in the Gulf. In a letter to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), General Sir Nick described Equilibrium as ‘providing geo-strategic advice internationally—helping to devise and implement the right strategies.’
He continued that Equilibrium is working on a contract it has had for some time with the government of Bahrain to provide advice to Bahrain’s government priorities framework, which, according to the retired general, excludes defence. Do Puffins believe him?
A fellow director at Equilibrium is the interesting Lord Grimstone, a former chairman of Barclays Bank and a director of Investcorp, whose largest single shareholder is the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. Investcorp’s international advisory board includes another former Minister of Defence, Michael Fallon.
One wonders how much General Sir Nick is paid by the Bahrainis and others? Among numerous directorships (and fellowship of the Hoover Institute and trusteeship of the Royal United Services Institute), the 66-year-old and his wife are sole directors and shareholders of a management consultancy company with only one employee, called Retrace Ltd.
According to documents placed at Companies House, Retrace was incorporated in the February after Carter stood down as Head of Defence Staff — only weeks after his letter to ACOBA. Retrace’s most recent accounts, filed two years into his relationship with the Gulf State and others, show accumulated shareholder funds of £616,748. As a tax dodge, at some point in the future, these monies will be paid to himself and his wife as a dividend rather than a wage.
We might be able to observe in the Ukraine in white vehicles but we couldn’t enforce, continued Sir Nick. 2.5% of GDP needs to be spent on defence now, but that would cost an extra eight billion pounds a year.
Ben Wallace reminded us that the US is no longer going to be the primary guarantor of European security. We have to take a greater share. Defence has been hollowed out over the decades. Nick Symonds says defence spending has gone up. No, it hasn’t. ‘Treasury tricks’ of adding aid to Ukraine to the total only makes it look as though it has.
Jen suggested Elon Musk come over to find the money, Department of Government Efficiency style. Nobody dared mention that the peace talks might not get anywhere and the Russians will keep grinding on.
Final question. What all the Ukrainians want to know. Will the UK government let them stay here after the war? Nick Symonds was proud of the welcome the British people had given, and rejoiced in the enrichment the Ukrainians had brought with them. Excuse me while I puke.
A Ukrainian in the audience pretended to cry while pitching for all her relatives to be brought here too.
***
As for our Local XI. They sit at the bottom of the bottom division, having wasted a fortune in two transfer windows on two full teams of nobodies – on long contracts and big wages — palmed onto clueless owners by unscrupulous agents and various hangers-on. One hopes for better for Mr Trump and Mr Rubio, not least on behalf of the people of Ukraine and neighbouring territories.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
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