'Be Ready' checklist: The national resilience moment that almost barely happened

It was the national resilience moment that very nearly barely happened. 

On Thursday afternoon, the Cabinet Office finally published without fanfare new advice for all households on how to be ready for emergencies.

This long-awaited push was supposed to send a strong signal to the country about the importance of readiness, marking the launch of a three-year campaign to shift the whole of UK society to a footing that is more resilient to any kind of shock.

But - unusually for a major government announcement - no minister had been scheduled to speak to unveil this piece of work.

It was just going to be a website update and a written ministerial statement to parliament.

Fortunately, by chance, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, was due to appear in front of the cameras on Thursday morning at the opening of a new gun hall in the West Midlands.

He made no mention of the imminent resilience push in a short speech that he gave, even though the website was due to go live a couple of hours later.

But he then opened up the floor to questions from various journalists, which gave Sky News the chance to ask him when ministers were going to start talking frankly about the need to prepare citizens for the possibility of war.

It was this question - not some carefully choreographed government announcement - that prompted Mr Streeting to reveal the resilience campaign was about to launch and to say that the UK needs to prepare for food shortages and cyber attacks.

Without our exchange, the whole national resilience big reveal would have unfolded in silence.

Delays to fire the starting gun

Still, the fact that the advice has been published at all will doubtless be a relief to those involved in drafting it because even the timing of the launch had been less than certain.

At first, it was expected in September. Then it was anticipated to be last week, or the start of this week.

I finally emailed the Cabinet Office on Tuesday to say I was planning to publish a piece about the repeated delays to even fire the starting gun on the readiness campaign. But then it emerged that the advice would eventually be coming out on Thursday.

Whether or not that date was firmed up in the wake of awkward questions about the delay is unclear.

One thing is certain, however: The lack of fanfare around readiness contrasts starkly with the approach taken by like-minded NATO allies.

The Baltic states and Nordic countries speak frankly with their citizens about what each household needs to do to have the best chance of survival in a conflict.

In the UK, a huge amount of work has gone on behind the scenes to plan for the "Be Ready" rollout, which was first trailed in July during the dying days of Sir Keir Starmer's government.

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Andy Burnham inherited the project as well as the leadership of the much-promised but minimally-delivered national conversation on defence.

Yet he appears to have chosen not to speak out on the launch of the new readiness campaign despite its national significance.

Even Dan Jarvis, the security minister, who is leading on resilience, stayed away from journalists on Thursday, instead just publishing his ministerial statement and sending out a written post on social media.

This lacklustre approach was met privately with disappointment among members of the resilience community.

The concern - rightly or wrongly - is that it creates the impression that preparing the country for the possibility of any crisis, up to and including war, is not a top priority for the government.

(c) Sky News 2026: 'Be Ready' checklist: The national resilience moment that almost barely happened