UK 'Officially Preparing For War' As Experts Warn 'Last Days Of Peace' Could Vanish Without Warning

The UK government is drawing up a new 'War Book' to guide how the country would respond in a major conflict, as a defence expert warns Britain may have no clear 'last days of peace' before modern war breaks out, according to the University of Exeter.

The UK's previous 'War Book', a detailed, classified manual setting out who does what when war is looming, was scrapped in 2004. It had underpinned Whitehall planning from 1939 onwards, laying out how departments would mobilise the economy, control information and protect critical infrastructure.

Its absence, the new report argues, has left officials and the public with little shared understanding of what might actually happen if Britain stood on the brink of a large-scale conflict.

The warning comes from Paul Mason, an honorary senior fellow at the University of Exeter, who has urged ministers to rebuild that framework and place it under explicit democratic control. In his briefing, he says the government's revived War Book must be subject to parliamentary scrutiny so that any emergency powers it contains are 'just and reversible,' rather than a blank cheque for the state.

His intervention dovetails with comments from the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, who has already confirmed that Whitehall is writing a new 'War Book' 'in a modern context, with modern society and modern infrastructure.'

'War Book' Revival And The 'Last Days Of Peace' Problem

The news came after a period in which the government had been quietly reorganising its crisis machinery. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, under pressure on several fronts at home and abroad, has formed a Middle East Response Committee in response to the ongoing confrontation between the United States and Iran.

While that body is focused on a specific regional flashpoint, Mason's briefing widens the lens; it asks whether Britain is structurally ready for any serious clash with a peer adversary.

The removal of the old 'War Book' twenty years ago, he argues, has created a 'vacuum of public assumptions about what the state might do if the UK found itself on the brink of kinetic war.'

That phrase matters. In Mason's view, the notion that there will be a clearly signposted run-up to conflict, the sort of tense but visible countdown remembered from 1939, no longer holds.

'The modus operandi of the enemy, to engage in hybrid and cognitive warfare in advance of kinetic, means we may never enjoy a 'last days of peace' phase such as those activating the 1939 War Book did,' he writes. 'All 21st-century conflicts are cognitive.'

In plainer English, that means information, perception and morale are already battlefields long before a shot is fired.

Domestic Will Seen As Strategic Weak Point

Mason's most pointed concern is not simply military hardware but public consent. 'If the population does not support the state in wartime, and conform to the behaviours required, the war could be lost strategically even if it could be won operationally,' he argues. It is an unfashionable line of thought in peacetime Britain, yet it goes to the heart of his push for a formal 'War Book'.

The logic is that you cannot cajole a population into emergency footing on the fly. Citizens, businesses and institutions need to know, in advance, what might be asked of them, who is in charge and where the limits of state power lie. Without that, Mason suggests, 'the more the state risks 'flying blind' in any situation where peer-vs-peer war becomes likely.'

Central to his proposal is the forthcoming Defence Readiness Bill, which he believes must explicitly create new emergency powers rather than leaving departments to improvise. Those powers, he insists, should be tightly drawn and clearly temporary. Mason's emphasis on 'reversible' authority is an acknowledgement of modern scepticism about sweeping state surveillance and control.

Rebuilding The Machinery Of War Preparation

Beyond the 'War Book' itself, the briefing sketches out a stark restructuring of government in the event of conflict. Mason recommends reshaping Whitehall 'around the overriding aim, to win by maintaining the will and the means to fight for longer than the adversary.'

His report floats the idea of a 'Ministry of War Production, with powers to command and control the private sector.' It also suggests folding economic security functions into a dedicated 'Ministry of Economic Warfare.' These are not polite tweaks to existing departments but a suggestion that, in wartime, the state would assume far more explicit direction over industry and finance.

Information management features prominently, too. Mason calls for a 'modernised wartime public information duty' for the BBC, effectively reviving its historic role as a linchpin of trusted communication during national crises. On top of that, he recommends a 'Lithuanian-style hardened secure state communications system' to ensure that government messaging and command channels can withstand hostile interference.

The government has confirmed only that a new 'War Book' is in development; the precise powers, structures and institutional changes remain unannounced, and there is no public draft of the Defence Readiness Bill setting them out.

Still, he is unequivocal about the stakes. 'Achieving maximum clarity and transparency at the design stage will be crucial for whole-of-society acceptance that such emergency provision exists, even if it is never activated,' Mason concludes.