Sky knows that several figures featured in The Wargame have current commercial links to the defence sector. AOAV asks why those interests remain absent from their biographies.

The party’s rise has been fuelled by strong patriotic messaging, yet important questions remain about its approach to security and armed violence.

As drought exposes the fragility of Britain’s water and food systems, the government’s defence-spending surge raises a larger question: whether national security is still being defined too narrowly for an age of climate disruption.

More than 50 UK civil society organisations – including AOAV – have written to the Prime Minister urging the Government to rebalance its approach to security by investing in diplomacy, development and climate action alongside defence, warning that an increasing focus on militarisation risks making the world less, not more, secure.

The UK has awarded £80 million to 24 universities to train the next generation of defence specialists, raising questions about the growing integration of higher education into Britain’s military-industrial strategy.

The resignations of Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns reflect a defence establishment mindset that treats military spending as an endlessly escalating necessity, despite the reality that no level of funding will ever satisfy the demands of the military-industrial complex.

A new report has identified more than £2.39bn in documented financial and academic partnerships between UK universities and military or arms industry organisations, prompting renewed calls for transparency and accountability across higher education.

A decade of Ministry of Defence transparency data reveals growing ties between senior officials and the defence industry, rising overseas spending and persistent gaps in disclosure that continue to obscure how public money, influence and national security decisions intersect.

Here AOAV finds that UK media outlets frequently present retired senior military figures as independent defence experts without disclosing their commercial ties to defence, security, intelligence, and technology industries, potentially obscuring conflicts of interest in public debates over war and military spending.

An AOAV convened panel at the Frontline Club examined how surging global military spending has reinforced a system in which arms companies, governments and media structures are intertwined, while legal and political mechanisms meant to restrain war profits often prove weak or unused.

Drawing on first-hand testimony from asylum seekers fleeing Ethiopia, Sudan and Afghanistan, this report examines how armed violence and international arms transfers, including UK exports, intersect with displacement, small boat crossings and the lived realities of Britain’s asylum system.

As Britain’s defence spending grows, QinetiQ’s state-backed profits appear to be funding the hard-right political ambitions of its largest shareholder, raising urgent ethical and regulatory questions.