new armoured vehicles, with AI-enabled digital targeting. The DIP claims all this will increase “lethality” by a factor of ten. The air force’s Typhoon jets will have their service lives extended into the 2040s with the help of a £300m investment in autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or “loyal wingmen”. They can act as sensor nodes and fly ahead of the Typhoon into danger to suppress air defences. The most daring—and controversial—project is the idea, developed in last year’s strategic defence review, of a “Hybrid Navy”: networks of crewed and uncrewed autonomous vessels carrying weapons, sensors and anti- submarine systems. The expensive Type 83 air-defence destroyer is cancelled. Instead, six new Common Combat Vessels (CCVs) are to join 13 new Type 26 and five cheaper Type 31 frigates as the backbone of the surface fleet. The CCVs will be a command hub controlling a dispersed group of large (up to 90-metre) autonomous warships. Some will carry missiles, others will be used for anti-submarine warfare or as sensor platforms. Even senior officers involved in visualising the hybrid navy admit that its radicalism will shock traditionalists and that it is certainly not without risk. Nick Childs, a seapower expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, says it is a calculated gamble which partly reflects how far the navy has fallen behind with its conventional platforms and the difficulty it has recruiting crews. Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at RUSI, another think-tank, says the emphasis on autonomy and uncrewed systems is “a bold bet on technological solutions with no margin for error if procurement is not speedy and implementation rapid.” What could possibly go wrong?■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/06/30/britain-hopes-drones-will-help-it- escape-its-defence-budget-bind
Death and dishonesty in British maternity hospitals Yet another report paints a bleak picture July 2nd 2026 Britons know too well that their National Health Service often provides poor care: in 2025 only 26% said they were satisfied with it, down from a high of 70% in 2010. Maternity care is a particularly bleak spot. A report by Baroness Valerie Amos, published on June 30th, concludes that mothers and babies are harmed across England in badly run hospitals incapable of learning from a litany of past investigations. But what still shocks are the lies. Consider, if you can bear it, the story of baby Harriet Hawkins and her parents Jack and Sarah. It is detailed in a report published on June 24th by Donna Ockenden, a midwifery expert, into the failings at the Nottingham
University Hospitals (NUH) trust between 2012 and 2025. Harriet died just before her birth in April 2016. Her mother had rung the maternity unit, repeatedly and in agony, asking to be admitted. She was told by midwives that she was “not in labour”. It was part of a policy of pressuring women to go home, or stay at home, in the early stages of labour. In total, Ms Ockenden concludes, there were nine missed chances to save Harriet. What followed was “a systemic cover-up and investigations designed to mislead”, found Ms Ockenden. Vital information was withheld from the pathologist looking into Harriet’s cause of death. A second post mortem was held without the consent of her parents, who happened to work at NUH. A new, supposedly independent review appeared to have been heavily edited to deflect blame from the hospital. Once, when Dr Hawkins rang the hospital in distress, a secret recording was taken, and later played to others at a meeting. Harriet’s story was emblematic of failings at NUH, says Ms Ockenden. She concludes that 162 mothers and babies suffered potentially avoidable deaths; hundreds more were seriously harmed. She describes a “toxic bullying culture” of senior midwives who gave simple cases to their friends and complex ones to junior staff to “see if they would sink or swim”. The trust pleaded guilty to criminal charges brought by the care regulator in 2025. A police investigation into possible corporate-manslaughter offences is under way.
Just as the Hawkins’ tragedy was far from isolated, the NUH scandal is symbolic of a far broader national failure. In 2009 the government said it hoped to halve the rate of maternal mortality; instead it has risen by 20%, leaving Britain behind many European peers(see chart). Last year £2.5bn ($3.3bn) was paid in compensation and associated costs for clinical negligence in maternity units, accounting for half of all medical payouts. The NUH fits within a grimly familiar pattern: over the past decade similar investigations were held into maternity units at Morecambe Bay (2015), Shrewsbury and Telford (2022), East Kent (2022) and Swansea Bay (2025). Ms Ockenden is running two more in Leeds and Sussex. Cover-ups are the prevailing theme. In her national report, Baroness Amos concludes that NHS leaders often prioritise their reputations over learning from calamities. Investigations amount to hospitals “marking their own homework”, with their findings at odds with events. An ugly feedback loop follows. A fear of compensation claims, which will show negligence, incentivises doctors to claim that tragedies were unavoidable. But facing obfuscation and silence, families are driven to sue, as many have, because it is the only way they can hope to uncover the truth. At NUH, that culture of denial resembled a conspiracy. Without naming perpetrators, Ms Ockenden repeatedly points the finger at consultant
obstetricians and the executive team. The NUH leaders hankered to run a top research hospital, famous for training and pilots. And so cases where mothers were injured and babies had died were downgraded as “low harm” or “no harm” rather than NUH admitting they required investigation. Blunders were written off: there was a “massive emphasis on ‘avoidability’; anything deemed ‘unavoidable’ was not investigated,” one medic said. Board papers were rewritten to remove serious concerns. A report on a rise in babies undergoing treatment for oxygen deprivation was “substantially altered” because it “upset doctors”. Even Ms Ockenden’s path was stymied. Files were destroyed, even after her investigation began. Hundreds of current and former staff volunteered information. But of 66 specially sought out for interview, nearly half refused. All that ought to have been impossible. British hospitals are bound by a “duty of candour”, requiring them to inform patients of serious mistakes that meet the threshold of causing “moderate harm”. It was introduced in 2014, after a similar scandal of poor care and cover-up at the Mid Staffordshire trust. Yet it doesn’t work when clinical staff and managers simply lie. At NUH, the duty often wasn’t triggered, precisely because incidents were routinely misclassified as below the threshold of requiring candour. Indeed, reports of such cases fell notably at NUH after the duty was introduced. A rule intended to make hospitals more honest instead induced dishonesty. There is a lesson for Andy Burnham, Britain’s probable next prime minister, who knows the “duty of candour” well. He was the health secretary during the Mid Staffordshire affair and wishes to apply a similar rule to the entirety of government, to end what he sees as a culture of state secrecy. But Ms Ockenden shows that a state cannot be compelled to tell the truth by passing new laws. It requires clearing out rotten cultures and rotten leaders.■ For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/07/02/death-and-dishonesty-in-british- maternity-hospitals
The ascent of the chippy southerner Andy Burnham offers something precious to the south: grievance July 2nd 2026 Andy Burnham is not yet prime minister, but the backlash against his rule has already begun. When Mr Burnham outlined his vision for Britain he did so in Manchester, the de facto capital of the north, where he was mayor for almost a decade. His ruling creed is Manchesterism, which blends stakeholderese (“UK plc”) with soppy references to The Smiths, a Mancunian band from Mr Burnham’s teenage years. To cement the shift of power away from Britain’s south, Mr Burnham pledged to create “Number 10 North”, shifting the prime minister’s abode from Downing Street to the north, for a few days a week at least. It provided ammo for those who seek to paint Mr Burnham as little more than a “chippy northerner”. Chippiness, that blend of grievance, resentment
and paranoia about a disconnected elite, is fundamental to Mr Burnham’s worldview. But his rise to power does not represent the triumph of the chippy northerner. Instead, British politics is witnessing the birth of something more novel and more potent. Chippiness, a state of mind once associated only with the north and the Celtic fringe, has spread to Britain’s south. Behold the ascent of the chippy southerner. Where there is chippiness, there is usually truth. The causes of the regional grumpiness are real enough. “It’s Scotland’s oil”, ran the slogan of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the 1970s, when proceeds from the North Sea’s reserves began to flow into the Treasury in London, helping subsidise Margaret Thatcher’s painful economic reforms that hit Scotland hard. Likewise, the north of England really does lose out when it comes to investment. Mr Burnham dislikes the “Green Book”, the Treasury’s rulebook, which he claims pushes too much investment south. The result is the technocrat’s version of Matthew 13:12: “Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” And so it is for the south. It bankrolls Britain. Fiscal transfers from London and the south-east to the rest of Britain amounted to about £60bn ($80bn) in 2023. It is the equivalent of the defence budget. If London and the south-east were an independent unit, it would be one of Europe’s richest countries. If London were a city state, it could build an Elizabeth Line, the 73-mile (117km), £20bn east-west line in the capital, twice over every year. Does anyone say “thank you” for this largesse? Do they heck. Cash flows in one direction; contempt in the other. Genuine grievance can easily morph into paranoia. Mr Burnham explained this worldview in “Head North”, a memoir-cum-manifesto, accusing southern elites of divide and rule: “They do it because they fear nothing more than the regions and nations uniting in common cause against a system that doesn’t have their interests at heart.” A paranoid worldview already dominates among chippy southerners. Take Mr Burnham at his word and devolution is a world in which the likes of London are probably better off. If London had the powers, it would borrow its own money or levy its own taxes and, say, build a Bakerloo extension, rather than begging the Treasury for a handout. Yet chippy southerners see devolution as little more than