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British forces intercept Russian shadow fleet vessel in English Channel

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The British armed forces intercepted a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the English Channel in the early hours of Sunday morning, the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said.

Royal Marine commandos and specially trained law enforcement officers from the National Crime Agency boarded a sanctioned oil tanker during a six-hour operation, according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The vessel, Smyrtos, will be held and monitored for any environmental or safety concerns off the south coast of England as investigations continue, the MoD added.

In a statement, Starmer said: “This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling (President Vladimir) Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide.”

Dan Jarvis will be expected to turn up at Nato meetings to defend the UK’s plans to be ready for war, even though many would agree they are underfunded. Photograph: Toby Shepheard/AFP/Getty Images

The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, said:

Operations like this require skill, professionalism and courage. I pay tribute to our armed forces personnel and all those involved.

Russia relies on its shadow fleet to fund their conflict in Ukraine and our interdiction delivers a blow to Putin’s illegal war.

The incident comes days after the former armed forces minister, Al Carns, and defence secretary, John Healey, resigned their posts after a protracted row over the defence investment plan (Dip). They said the plan, which has faced repeated delays, is seriously underfunded and falls short of what the defence department needs to keep Britain safe at such a volatile time.

Healey said the government was only willing to give an extra £10bn in additional funding, a figure he said is well below what is needed amid the threat from Russia and other major security challenges.

Key events

Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has posted this on X:

I pay tribute to the brave Royal Marine Commandos who boarded a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker overnight in the English Channel. Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine is funded by their oil exports in defiance of sanctions. As Leader of the Opposition, I support the government in standing with Ukraine.

My colleagues Mark Brown and Jessica Elgot have filed a full report on the British armed forces intercepting and boarding a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel this morning. Here is an extract from their story:

British authorities say the Smyrtos is one of 700 vessels in a shadow fleet responsible for carrying 75% of Russia’s sanctioned oil. The fleet provides Russia with what analysts say is a critical lifeline, allowing oil to be sold and funds generated to continue its war against Ukraine.

The Sunday morning operation is the first time the UK has led on such an endeavour, previously providing support to the French military when it carried out something similar in the Atlantic…

Calling it a “blow to Putin’s war chest”, the MoD said the operation had been “conducted in close cooperation with the French”. It said the UK was a leader in tackling the shadow fleet, having already placed sanctions on more than 500 vessels.

“These sanctions are working,” the ministry said, with Russia’s oil and gas revenues falling by 24% year-on-year in 2025.

Suspected Russian shadow fleet oil tanker (Smyrtos) was boarded by British forces in the English Channel. Photograph: Vessel Finder

Nandy agrees with Burnham on cutting welfare in order to fund defence

Lisa Nandy said she agrees with Andy Burnham that cuts in welfare could be used to fund significant increases in defence spending. The culture secretary told Sky News: “We’re only spending £1 in every 25 through the welfare budget in helping young people to actually find work and that is a disgraceful situation that we inherited and we have got to change that.”

While a Labour leadership contest is yet to be officially launched, it is widely speculated that if he wins the Makerfield byelection on 18 June, which polls say is likely, Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, will seek to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.

He is positioning himself as the only Labour party politician who has a chance at beating Reform UK – and said in a recent interview with The Times that he wants to reduce the welfare bill and make sure there is adequate funding for the military.

“I am not squeamish about saying that the plan would be to reduce the welfare bill,” he said. “Not at all.” “It is not the traditional Westminster way of just crude cuts, short-term cuts that then create a backlash and create more political turbulence. It is actually going to do things that will reduce the benefits bill, moving towards a more preventative state that makes the right investments to support people into work.”

As my colleagues report in this story, teenagers under the age of 16 are expected to be banned from accessing “high-risk” social media apps while safer platforms will be subjected to restrictions, under a sweeping government crackdown.

Under-18s will also be banned from using romantic or sexual AI chatbots after a consultation on keeping children safe online.

When asked on Sky News this morning about the plans, the culture secretary said banning social media for under-16s is on its own not “the silver bullet solution,” but has a “role to play” in protecting children online.

Nandy told Sky News:

I don’t want to get ahead of the prime minister’s announcement (expected on Monday). But when we launched the consultation, it was a question of how we better protect young people online, not if we do so.

And one of the things that a social media ban does and has been shown to do in Australia is that although it doesn’t stop all young people going online and onto social media apps, it does mean that you change the presumption at a very early age to stop the situation where kids as young as eight, nine, 10, 11 are going on to social media sites because all of their friends are on them at an age when, frankly, they’re not really emotionally equipped to be able to cope with it.

So the question of more regulation is – it’s a definite yes from the government, more enforcement action. I don’t think banning social media on its own is the silver bullet solution, but I do think Australia has shown very clearly that it has a significant role to play.

Culture secretary says she agrees with some of what former defence minister said in resignation letter

The UK’s culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said Keir Starmer’s top priority remains keeping the public safe, pointing to the government slashing the aid budget as a “tough decision” that apparently proved their commitment to properly funding defence.

She said government departments are looking at further cutting their budgets to help fund defence.

When pressed by Sky News presenter Wilfred Frost on whether Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, will be given more money for defence than what was offered last week, Nandy said: “I don’t know. I don’t know what stage the negotiations had reached when John Healey decided to resign.” She said that she likes and respects Healey and confirmed that the government will publish the defence investment plan ahead of the Nato summit scheduled for early July.

Lisa Nandy sidestepped questions on whether more money would be offered to new defence secretary Dan Jarvis than to his predecessor John Healey. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

In what sounded like her urging the Treasury to give up more money for defence, Nandy said “we have to rise to meet this moment” as the “threat level” has risen and “we have got to be prepared to invest to the levels that are needed in order to do it”.

Despite being bound by collective cabinet responsibility, Nandy interestingly said she agreed with some of what the former defence minister, Al Carns, said in his resignation letter last week (as a reminder he quit because the defence plan had not been well enough funded and the government was planning to spend its money on outdated systems). Nandy told Sky News:

I think Al Carns though, who resigned as defence minister this week, put it very well in his resignation letter.

Because the challenge is both to transform the way that we do defence, it is to increase the levels of spending even further than this government has already done in order to meet this moment.

But it is also to invest more broadly in the national resilience of the country and that includes economic insecurity, as he pointed out in the letter, strong public services, strong communities – and we as a government have to do all three things at once.

So, I won’t pretend that this is easy and I won’t pretend that these negotiations sometimes aren’t quite tense and quite difficult.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Dan Jarvis said he had a “big responsibility” towards soldiers who risk their lives for the country.

Jarvis, himself a former soldier, said he was still working through the detail of the defence investment plan, which will lay out how much military equipment and infrastructure will be paid for over the next decade. The new defence secretary told the Sunday Telegraph: