Jannike Wachowiak makes the case for a UK-EU resilience partnership as a way to both help the two sides be better prepared and able to respond to certain crises and to provide much needed impetus to the UK-EU reset. 

The first post-Brexit UK-EU summit, held in 2025, provided a roadmap of measures intended to soften the edges of the Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. The second is pencilled in for the summer, and its primary function is clear: to get ongoing talks on agrifood-trade, emission trading and a youth experience scheme over the line. Yet a summit that merely deals with outstanding business is one that is not doing its job. As well as closing negotiations already underway, it is important, not least to maintain a sense of momentum about the UK-EU ‘reset’, to lock the two sides into a continuing process.

Absent new ideas, it will be hard to avoid the impression that the reset is beginning to run out of steam. Various ideas have been suggested – ranging from the UK joining Creative Europe to a UK-EU Industrial Cooperation Council – that would build on the Common Understanding without crossing red lines.

Another idea that would fit the bill, and which has received precious little attention, is the possibility of forming a UK-EU ‘resilience partnership’ to ensure both sides are better prepared and able to respond to certain crises.

Pandemics, wars and climate emergencies like floods, wildfires and severe storms are increasingly common, and cannot be contained in one country. These externalities create precisely the kind of rationale that underpins cooperation among neighbours. What is more, the effects of these crises are increasingly visible to citizens. In 2025, Portugal and Spain experienced the worst wildfires since records began, and across England 6.3 million properties are based in areas at risk of flooding. And most of us have first-hand experience of a global pandemic. This should make crisis preparedness and response an uncontroversial area for cooperation.

And there is a global dimension to this. The Trump administration is pulling the US out of the multilateral global health and climate security systems, with significant cuts to domestic and international crisis prevention programmes. On the day of his inauguration, President Trump ordered the US’ withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, and a year later he announced the US would withdraw from another 66 international organisations, treaties and agencies, many of which are climate-related. This creates a clear need for Europeans to fill the vacuum bilaterally and globally.

Part of the response could be a ‘Resilience Partnership’ to enhance collective resilience and preparedness. This could have several components. The two sides might want to set up a dedicated ‘Health and Climate Security Dialogue ‘to both share information and explore how to build on existing cooperation, including the UK’s association to the EU’s Critical Medicines Alliances and medical research and innovation under the Horizon Programme.

The UK-EU Security and Defence Partnership from May 2025 encourages closer cooperation in these areas, but without going into specifics. The EU and Canada are already a step ahead, with a dedicated ‘Health Dialogue’ set up in 2021, and the promise of a ‘Climate Security Dialogue’ to share climate data and analysis. Given the global dimension, there could be an incentive to create links between the EU’s various dialogues with like-minded partners.

A dedicated EU-UK dialogue could be a launching pad for more formalised ties. For instance to consider whether to include the UK in the activities of the European Climate and Health Observatory. The observatory was set up in 2021, is managed by the Commission and European Environment Agency, and supports 38 members and cooperating countries in preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change on human health.

Another possibility would be UK association to the EU Civil Protection Programme. This helps to mobilise resources (like response teams and equipment) and knowledge to support countries affected by war and natural disasters. The largest operation to date has been in support of Ukraine, and the mechanism has also recently been used to coordinate consular support for citizens stranded in the Middle East.

The UK used to be an active and reliable member of the Civil Protection Programme and contributed to 14 emergency operations between 2014 and 2020. Post-Brexit, it could seek association. The programme is open to non-EU member states and includes ten participating countries ranging from Moldova to Norway to Ukraine.

Exploring a ‘Resilience Partnership’ along those lines would an easy win. It would give renewed impetus to the bilateral relationship and make it clear that the reset is ongoing. For the UK, it fits into the government’s preference for incremental progress and does not cross its red lines. For the EU, ‘resilience’ is one of four areas which it wants to see strengthened in its relations vis-à-vis the UK (as outlined in the Commission’s 2024-2029 political guidelines).

For both sides, it would be a pragmatic step forward which could be easily sold to the public. Last but not least, it would further build trust and provide a sense of solidarity which could help pave the ground for other steps further down the line.

By Jannike Wachowiak, Research Associate, UK in a Changing Europe.

Two years ago, the Health Secretary promised people with osteoporosis life-saving early diagnosis clinics. He has repeated that promise 63 times – yet nothing has changed. And for every year that ministers delay, another 2,000 people die needlessly.

People with osteoporosis have been overlooked for decades, driven by the mistaken belief that broken bones are a normal part of ageing rather than a treatable medical condition. This cruel disease silently weakens bones until they can break from coughs, sneezes or even a hug. For someone with osteoporosis, a fall from standing height can be enough to break a hip. Half of women over 50 will experience fractures due to the condition, alongside one in five men.

I meet grandmothers terrified to lift a newborn baby for fear their bones could shatter, and women in early menopause who are told by GPs they have the bones of an 80-year-old.

Yet help exists. Safe, effective treatments costing as little as £1 a week can restore independence and save lives. So why are millions still missing out?

The answer is a brutal postcode lottery. Half of NHS Trusts still lack Fracture Liaison Services (FLS) – specialist clinics that identify patients and get them onto treatment before it’s too late. Without them, the consequences are devastating. A broken hip is often a death sentence – killing over a quarter of patients within a year.  

During the 2024 general election campaign, this community was given hope for the first time. All three main parties proposed a national rollout of FLS clinics to every area by 2030. Since then, Reform and the Greens have added their support, too.

Wes Streeting went furthest: he promised that a plan for national rollout would be one of his first acts in government. But two years on, no plan has been delivered. And we’ve seen no new clinics at all.

Around 60 NHS Trusts in England still lack Fracture Liaison Services. A national rollout takes time and requires steady progress year by year. Ministers would have needed to deliver FLS to around 24 Trusts by now to stay on track for full rollout by 2030. Instead, delivery stands at zero.

In opposition, Wes Streeting described delays to these clinics as a “betrayal of patients.” With nearly two years now passed, we’ve had more delay under this government than the last.

And delay costs lives. Around 2,000 people die each year following hip fractures that these clinics prevent. In the time since this promise was made, 4,000 lives have been lost waiting for rollout.

Meanwhile, the NHS has spent £150m treating avoidable fractures since the election – far more than it would have cost to put these preventative clinics in place. This isn’t just a missed opportunity. It’s a failure that is harming patients right now.

We should be making progress. More than 60 countries already are. New Zealand has just rolled out these services to cover 99 per cent of its population, while Japan has quadrupled FLS in three years. In Wales, ministers made FLS a national priority and mandated that, within five years, each service should develop the bandwidth to treat every citizen aged over 50 in their area.

By 2030, therefore, it will be markedly safer to grow old in Wales than in England. There is no excuse for England falling so far behind.

Ministers point to a very small investment in bone scanners, made to honour a separate (very welcome) election promise. But a scan without treatment saves no one. Without assessment and follow-up through Fracture Liaison Services, patients remain at high risk of another fracture.

Worse still, uncertainty from Whitehall is pushing fracture prevention locally into reverse. Some areas have paused their own plans, expecting a national rollout that has yet to materialise.

Ultimately, the question is about political will. Ministers have made the commitment. They’ve repeated it 63 times. They know it will save lives and money. Why won’t they deliver it? People with osteoporosis have waited long enough. After decades of neglect, they were promised change.

If the promise is broken, it will deepen the sense that their lives simply don’t matter.

We stand ready to work with the government to achieve the outcome they promised. We won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If a credible plan is published, we’ll get behind it and help ministers get those clinics set up.

But progress starts with a plan.  

During the election, people with osteoporosis were promised change. Two years on, they’re still waiting. So I ask the Health Secretary Wes Streeting directly: will you now publish the plan for the life-saving bone clinics you promised?

 For more information, visit theros.org.uk/StillNoPlan

Helen Whately is the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

“We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”

That statement last week might have escaped notice — but for the fact that it was made by Lord George Robertson: former Labour Defence Secretary, Labour Peer, and Labour-appointed author of the Government’s Strategic Defence Review.

Lord Robertson is not someone you’d expect to cause trouble for our beleaguered Prime Minister. But like many of us, he has run out of patience. And as former Secretary General of NATO, he knows the consequences more than most.

Britain’s welfare spending is now undermining our ability to defend ourselves.

The state exists first and foremost to keep us safe, yet we spend only 2.4 per cent of GDP on defence. As NATO members we have pledged to reach 5% by 2035 — a level we have surpassed not on defence, but on working-age welfare. Annual working-age welfare spending is now £140bn and rising, against a mere £50bn on defence.

The comments below will say “it happened under your watch” — and indeed it did. Under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, because the decline in defence spending goes back to the end of the Cold War. Only when Russia invaded Ukraine did our defence spending – under Boris – seriously step up.

Meanwhile, welfare has kept growing. Working-age welfare went from 2–3 per cent of GDP in the early 1980s to 6 per cent after the 2008 crash. We brought it back to 4.5 per cent pre-Covid; it has since risen to 5.3 per cent.

The nature of welfare has also changed.

When the modern welfare state was built after WWII, support was limited and often short-term — unemployment cover for those who’d paid National Insurance, or temporary sickness relief. Old age benefits were drawn on by fewer people, for less time. Means-tested benefits were a last resort and stigmatised.

Now, the fastest-growing part of the welfare bill is health and disability. More people are assessed as unable to work and go onto benefits; few ever come off them. The welfare state is no longer a stopgap or safety net. For a growing number of people, it is a permanent alternative to work.

Part of the problem is structural. Most public spending is controlled through departmental budgets, with Ministers and Permanent Secretaries forced to balance priorities and operate within limits. Welfare is demand-led: eligibility is set, and anyone who qualifies gets it. As caseloads grow, spending rises automatically. There’s no pressure to keep to a budget, but infinite jeopardy for any Secretary of State who dares make savings.

Add shifting social attitudes. Claiming benefits used to carry a sense of shame. More common now is entitlement — ‘it’s my right’ — without any commensurate responsibility. Meanwhile, working families are going without holidays, deferring purchases, furnishing their homes from charity shops, all the while paying taxes to fund others to have things they cannot afford.

We’ve reached a tipping point. As one constituent wrote to me recently: “You work so hard — and for what?”

Unless something changes, the UK will spend £650 billion on working-age welfare by the end of the decade, against less than £300 billion on defence.

The war in the Middle East has left us exposed. “We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe” — Lord Robertson again.

We have to grip welfare spending so we can invest in defence. That’s clear to me. But to Labour?

Labour MPs have been celebrating the lifting of the two-child benefit cap at a cost of over £3 billion a year. The prospect of weaker-than-ever Starmer persuading his backbenchers to vote for welfare cuts in the months ahead is laughable.

Except this is no laughing matter. The security of our country is at stake.

Serious times need serious leadership. We cannot keep spending more on Welfare, funding millions to stay at home with anxiety and ADHD, while starving Defence.

As Kemi Badenoch has said, whether we like it or not, we are in this war. We must tell the truth. We live in a world that has become more dangerous- and we must change our priorities.

I have already identified £23 billion of welfare savings: restricting benefits to foreigners, stopping sickness benefits for anxiety and ADHD, reforming Motability, returning to face-to-face assessments. I am not stopping there.

A country where those who can work do work will be a stronger country. We have drifted from a culture of “I can because I must” to a culture of “I can’t” — stripping people of agency and turning them into victims. It is time to turn that around. To invest in the defence of the realm over the benefit state. We can, because we must.

Ten years ago this week, Mark Meechan – aka Count Dankula – posted a joke video to his little-watched YouTube channel. It showed his girlfriend’s pet pug, Buddha, performing Nazi salutes and responding to the phrase, ‘Gas the Jews’. The skit went viral – and also caught the attention of the Scottish authorities, who had Dankula arrested, thrown in a police cell and eventually convicted for his ‘grossly offensive’ video. spiked’s Fraser Myers caught up with the now notorious ‘speech criminal’ to find out whether Count Dankula may have had the last laugh.

Plus: watch spiked’s classic documentary, The Curious Case of the Nazi Pug, presented by Andrew Doyle, to get the full story here.

Join us for the spiked summit, our biggest ever live event, on Saturday 27 June in Westminster, featuring Konstantin Kisin, Lionel Shriver, Katharine Birbalsingh, Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Brendan O’Neill, Tom Slater and more speakers to be announced. Get tickets here.