BIO

James Heappey has recently left British politics after nine years as a Member of Parliament and four and a half as the UK’s Minister for the Armed Forces. In this role he was the deputy to the British Defence Secretary at the time of greatest geopolitical crisis since the 1960s, overseeing the UK’s military response to the war in Ukraine as well as the work of the armed forces to support the civil authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kabul and Khartoum airlifts, the war in Gaza and the Houthi threat in the Southern Red Sea.

In addition to overseeing the operational policy of the UK Armed Forces, Heappey also led on the UK’s Defence Diplomacy visiting over 80 countries and establishing a strong network of senior military, political and policy interlocutors across the globe – particularly in the Global South. He has become a regular speaker at international conferences and is particularly expert on the changing nature of conflict and the chronic challenge from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea to the western interest across the developing world.

Heappey was the ministerial lead for the MOD taskforce for supplying Ukraine with ammunition and weapon systems in response to the Russian invasion. Here, he was responsible for both buying up usable ammunition and weapons from countries around the world as well as the identification and rapid scaling of technologies that could create novel weapon systems for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Before politics, Heappey served in the British Army deploying on operations to Iraq, Northern Ireland and twice to Afghanistan. He is a regular contributor in the UK media with his own show, Superpowers, on Times Radio’s YouTube channel. He is the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at M+C Saatchi World Services and advises a number of companies in the defence and security industries.