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EDITOR'S PICK
Good morning from William Cash, the Mace Editor-in-chief
Party faithful
Even when we are closing in on a new prime minister – and spads are working into the night desperately trying to hold on to jobs for their bosses – Westminster and London’s diplomatic community follows a predictable summer boozing pattern.
The first week in July traditionally sees the political and diplomatic class party season getting into its stride, before Westminster breaks for summer and the knives get sharpened poolside for the autumn conference season. Inevitably, The Mace was ahead of the pack as our summer lunch at The UnHerd Club was in mid-June, attended by various shadow cabinet ministers, CEOs of leading public affairs agencies.
Unusual dietary requirements
When I sent out a pour memoire to our 46 guests asking about any “dietaries”, a Tory life peer joked by replying “Only Beluga and Bollinger, please”. My editorial assistant’s AI duly noted the request and forwarded it on literally to the club manager (“Two gluten-free, one vegan, one pescatarian and one Beluga and Caviar”).
Honestly, today may be the 250th anniversary of American Independence and Silicon Valley tech barons may now rule the world, but AI has some way to go before understanding British irony. Of course, top of London’s July party list is the American ambassador’s Grand American Jubilee bash on Tuesday, 7th July, at Winfield House, his grand Regent’s Park mansion with music by country star Tim McGraw.
Despite the scandalous sinking of Global Counsel, the merry-go-round of summer cocktail parties this year suggests that times are still good for the public affairs industry. The Mace followed DGA Partners glitzy 5th anniversary party on the Kitty Hawk roof top bar in St Martin’s Lane and a Pimm’s soaked bash and political awards ceremony hosted by Pagefield CEO Oli Foster in Westminster’s exclusive Abbey Gardens.
On Wednesday evening, the competition included The Spectator’s summer party – modestly billed by its own Steerpike columnist as “the most sought-after social ticket of the Westminster summer season” – as well as the Prosperity Institute gathering at the Institute of Directors on Pall Mall. Plus a summer party at Clarence House with shiny new Range Rovers parked up in the King’s garden, and the CIPR’s 2026 Excellence Awards, held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel.
Making plans without Nigel
One talking point was Nigel Farage not turning up to any of them. Last year, Farage was a guest speaker at the Prosperity party, alongside Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who politely suggested that the Conservative family of the Right should work together rather than tear each other apart, to which Farage replied: “Forget it.”
That Rupert Lowe, the Restore upstart whose claims of support were found badly lacking in Makerfield, was at the Speccie soiree may have had something to do with Farage’s absence. Or was he simply sitting it out with a Pimm’s watching the England game?
Extinction rebellion
Reform’s Richard Tice cancelled plans to speak at the Prosperity party, leading to Danny Kruger, MP for Devizes, standing in for Reform’s deputy – though Tice did turn up at The Spectator party with Kemi Badenoch. As guests swept in to the IoD’s gardens in linen suits, Kruger was given just 45 minutes notice by Prosperity’s head of strategy Fred de Fossard (also a fine writer for The Mace).
Now that’s called standing in for your boss. Kruger began by noting that his tie was that of a member of the Great Bustard Group. He explained that, under the patronage of King Charles, a project was underway in the rolling downlands around Salisbury to return the once extinct Bustard to Britain – made extinct thanks to becoming a Victorian dinner party delicacy as well as a hunting trophy – using breeding pairs from Russia and Ukraine. “There’s a metaphor here,” said Kruger. “Things can return – we will take our country back.”
On the Lam
By the time Katie Lam, the 34-year-old MP for Weald of Kent – long touted as a future Tory leader – took to the terrace portico to give the “Conservative” speech at the Prosperity party, England had just clinched victory in their DR Congo clash. As an accomplished librettist and fan of musical theatre, Lam joked, when she took the microphone, that she was tempted to break into a rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”
Instead, she stuck to her Tory script, channelling her inner Thatcher, and said that “there was still a lot of work to be done to get the country back in the direction it deserved to be”. Lam said she was “very optimistic” about the country and “very negative’ about the State. “One day the British economy will grow again and people will think the future can be better than the past.”
She then herogrammed the work of some of the top Prosperity policy wonks, notably Guy Dampier, for his pioneering “generational work” on immigration. She also welcomed Prosperity’s new CEO Paul Coleman’s return to London after many years in Austria where he built up, from scratch, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). An author and pioneer (with Toby Young) of free speech, expect plenty of innovative “oven-ready” legal policy work on freedom of expression to come out of Prosperity under his leadership.
In European policy circles, Coleman is well known for spearheading training and legal advocacy initiatives in over 80 countries, showing how Prosperity’s policy interests are becoming increasingly globalised and not just UK-focused. As the glossy booklet in the goodie bag put it: “Paul’s return to the UK reflects a deep conviction that the principles underpinning free speech and national prosperity need championing here at home.” Something to mull over while we sip our complimentary miniature bottle of 2026 Prosperity Original Gin.
Teal we meet again?
Earlier this year, after her friend Robert Jenrick defected to Reform, there was speculation that Lam might follow suit. As somebody tipped as a future Tory leader, what a scalp that would have been. Lam had been one of Jenrick’s key acolytes in his failed bid to win the Tory leadership crown in 2024.
But then in a later Spectator podcast she poured water on this idea, saying that she hadn’t spoken to or texted her former political bosom buddy “even once” since he defected, having cancelled him. Her Thatcherite speech at the Prosperity party put a final nail in the idea of Lam and Jenrick teaming up again, not least as Lam’s prospects continue to rise in the Conservative party as a junior whip and Home Office shadow minister. The Guardian have outed her as a “disciple” of Dominic Cummings which makes any teal rapprochment even more unlikely.
Final fling
Before the summer recess, there’s another merry-go-round of summer parties next week before Westminster packs its bags before the silly season officially begins. Only this time there’s going to be a new PM so it might not be quite so silly this July and August.
For those with any party gas in the tank, first up is the H/Advisors Summer Parliamentary get-together in the Commons on Monday 6 July – where CEO John Rowland and former Downing Street staffer Sonia Khan will be holding court. (Confession: as I wrote after Mace hosted our 5th anniversary bash last December, I’ll be leaving an hour to get through Cromwell Green entrance due to the unofficial “go-slow” by Commons security).
The Egos have Landed
Then on Tuesday, 7th July, there’s a clash between the Politico Summer Party (“Raise a glass…before the summer plotting begins.”) and the US Embassy bash. This year, we hear, Andy Burnham was invited by the US ambassador but has turned the much sought after invitation down claiming a “diary clash.”
The snub may be more to do with political egos. Relations between Burnham and Trump’s White House did not get off to the best start after Trump described Burnham last week as a former “mayor of a town”, sniffing he was “extremely liberal.”
Party like it’s 1776
The American embassy 250th bash will include up to 2500 guests with U.S. Ambassador Warren Stephens and the U.S. Marines welcoming top diplomats, American ex-pats, financial and business leaders, MPs, VIP media, peers, military top brass and various “celeb” hangers on into his vast rolling gardens.
Other than Burnham, other party leaders are expected to attend as well as former prime ministers (we’ve had six since 2010 and Burnham will be the seventh). On the same night, there’s also The Swiss Embassy’s Soireé Suisse at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington.
Will Nigel show?
Judging by last year’s Politico bash in the English Speaking Union, for Westminster’s political and media class, its summer party may be the one that gives Michael Gove’s Speccie bash a run in for the title of “Westminster’s hottest social ticket”. Expect A list policy wonks, ex-PMs, MPs, spads, business leaders and – as Politico boasts – “the influencers driving the national conversation.” The only real question come Tuesday is: will Nigel show up? (Answer: probably not as he’ll be at Winfield House).
Summit special
With the critical 2026 Nato summit in Ankara coming up next week, it’s worth reading the insightful op-ed for The Mace by John Howie, head of corporate affairs at leading UK defence firm Babcock International. With likely new PM Andy Burnham facing a £4.7 billion defence black hole, Howie argues that the government must learn the strategic value of sovereign defence capability.
Howie points out that following the end of the Cold War, the UK – like our Nato allies – not only accepted what we now refer to as the “peace dividend” but also continued a journey to modernise our defence procurement system. Part of the reform agenda was to “move away from the dominance of single-source or non-competed contracts which made up over 70% of all MoD procurement (by volume) in 2009-10 through an increasing focus on the “use of competition as the principal method of determining value for money”.
Competition time
By 2021-22, Howie notes, competition was the basis of awarding over 50% of all MoD contracts placed – a significant increase. With that policy of driving towards competition came a willingness to open up the UK defence market to international competitors without constraint, a policy that “has never really been adopted by any of our allies or competitors”.
While this, in theory, brought the benefits of gaining access to the best available warfighting capability and allowed the UK to benefit from larger non-UK programmes, it also “came at a price that was unexpected at the time. Over time, a number of critical UK defence capabilities have been delivered by multinational companies who are headquartered outside the UK.”
Low-cost combat
That brings us back to the present, and the changing face of modern warfare, well evidenced in the war in Ukraine. As Howie observes, not only has that conflict changed the way we see warfare thanks to Ukraine’s incredibly effective use of low-cost capabilities for major impact, but it has also posed a major political question in relation to UK defence procurement: would the foreign governments where those international businesses are based allow the UK to utilise, deploy or gift those capabilities to Ukraine?
As Howie says: “Whatever the answer, what became clear is that we sometimes lacked the sovereign ability to act without consultation or approval.”
This is indeed worrying and must be a key thought on the mind of the UK’s new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis when he takes his seat representing Britain at the Ankara summit next week.
John Howie’s article should be required reading for all members of Jarvis’s team before they arrive in Turkey. Read it in full here.
Soldiering on
With a special view to the Nato summit, I’d also recommend that the MoD team heading to Ankara read Jasset Harlech’s sharp forensic analysis of the newly published Defence Investment Plan. Harlech is a life peer from a military background who speaks out on defence issues in the House of Lords.
Harlech argues that Britain simply cannot afford to fall behind its Nato allies on defence spending. As a former officer in the Coldstream Guards, he makes the point that new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is a “soldier’s soldier”. Commissioned into the Parachute Regiment, Jarvis served in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, and was appointed MBE for his service. Unflappable as security minister, he is “well regarded across Westminster and Whitehall”, notes Harlech.
Black hole
Why then did a former soldier turned politician “who knows precisely what readiness costs” agree to own a settlement his predecessor resigned over? Of course, we don’t know the exact details of what sums were promised when Starmer replaced John Healey with Jarvis.
The news that Andy Burnham will now have to fill a £4.7 billion defence black hole over the next four years has been described by one close source to the probable new PM as an “unexploded bomb”. The Conservatives have seized on this spending shortfall by describing the new £298 billion Plan as a “delayed-action poisoned pill” for Burnham when he becomes PM.
Turkey twizzler
This gap will only intensify the discomfort Jarvis will feel when he takes his seat in Ankara. As Harlech notes, Poland will spend close to 4.8% of GDP this year. Germany is doubling its budget and on a path to 3.5% by 2029. The Netherlands has more than doubled its budget since 2021 and has committed to 3.5% by 2035.
Across European Nato, spending rose faster last year than in any year since 1953. The new £298 billion spending plan will still make Britain Nato’s third-largest financial spender, only behind Germany and the US. But the government has announced only £10.3 billion has been “identified” for spending purposes.
All at sea
What Harlech points out is that it remains depressingly clear that the UK remains a “first-rank power trimming the sail while our neighbours pile on canvas”. The strategic weather makes this hard to defend, he says. The Defence Select Committee’s verdict was blunt: the world, and especially Germany, is rearming at pace, and the United Kingdom is not keeping up. Russia is running a war economy, and the government’s own assessment is that it could be ready to test Nato by 2030.
Read Lord Harlech’s article in full here.
William.cash@macemagazine.com
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