Too little, too late. I’m afraid that was my instinctive response to news that British Armed Forces had intercepted and boarded a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the Channel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

In an undoubtedly daring six-hour operation, Royal Marine commandos and officers from the National Crime Agency took control of the vessel Smyrtos, one of hundreds of tankers used to transport Russian oil and help fund Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

Little wonder, then, that Sir Keir Starmer was eager to trumpet the mission’s triumph.

‘This successful operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine that we will not let them hide,’ he crowed on X.

Well, as a 30-year military veteran who has served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Ireland and the Balkans, as well as heading the International Terrorism Intelligence Team in the Cabinet Office, I am here to say that this smacks less of a meaningful strategic blow against Russia than a beleaguered Prime Minister attempting – if you’ll excuse the pun – to shore up his own defences.

Let us not forget that Sir Keir first announced plans to crack down on Russia’s shadow fleet back in March.

Yet according to figures released by his own Government, 184 shadow fleet vessels transited British waters between March and May without consequence.

Why, then, act now? You do not need to be a cynic to observe that this dramatic intervention has arrived at a particularly sensitive moment for a Prime Minister whose authority is under growing strain both at home and abroad.

Last week, his Defence Secretary John Healey resigned, warning that the level of military spending proposed ‘falls well short’ of what is required to protect Britain. Healey was quickly followed by Armed Forces minister Al Carns, who declared the Government’s defence investment plans were ‘neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded’.

Given those extraordinary verdicts, Sir Keir may well believe that a display of military resolve will help bolster support among wavering colleagues and strengthen his position as questions about his leadership grow ever louder.

Then there is the small matter of the looming G7 summit this week and the Nato gathering that follows shortly afterwards in July.

With Britain’s defence posture increasingly under scrutiny, neither could come at a worse time for a Prime Minister desperate to project authority on the world stage while avoiding the prospect of embarrassment alongside an increasingly unpredictable Donald Trump. Let us not forget that the President has already denounced Sir Keir as ‘not Winston Churchill’ after his refusal to permit the use of UK bases for the initial US- Israel strikes on Iran.

Against this backdrop, does this not look suspiciously like political posturing? For when leaders find themselves under pressure, the oldest trick in the playbook is to redirect attention elsewhere and hope voters mistake activity for achievement.

The uncomfortable truth is that, for all Sir Keir’s bravado, what unfolded in the Channel was hardly the D-Day landings.

Any boarding operation at sea involving troops, aircraft and ships carries risks, and I have nothing but respect for the men and women who carried it out. But in military terms it was a limited tactical action, not a decisive turning point in the conflict.

Nonetheless, even limited actions can carry consequences. Is Sir Keir prepared for how Putin might respond? The Russian leader is not known for quietly absorbing perceived setbacks.

More broadly, the operation highlights a recurring problem with this Government: a preference for grand rhetoric over sustained action.

When Sir Keir came to power in 2024 he spoke of a ‘cast iron commitment’ to increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income.

Yet Britain’s Armed Forces continue to face severe capability challenges after years of underinvestment.

Which brings us back to the Defence Investment Plan. For a Defence Secretary to resign on the grounds that military funding is inadequate is extraordinary. For an Armed Forces minister to follow him out of the door saying much the same thing is more extraordinary still.

What this demonstrates is that neither Sir Keir nor much of his wider party appear to grasp the scale of the threat Britain faces –and that is not merely my view, either.

In April, George Robertson, one of the authors of the Strategic Defence Review, condemned what he described as a ‘corrosive complacency’ in the Government’s approach to defence.

Sadly, those two words alone tell us far more about the true state of Britain’s security than any supposedly devastating ‘blow’ Sir Keir claims to have struck against Russia.

• Richard Kemp is a former British Army commander