Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said he believes the conflict in Ukraine will still be going on in another 12 months' time ahead of tomorrow's one year anniversary of the Russian invasion. 

Asked if the war will still be going on in another year, Mr Wallace told LBC Radio: "I think we will. I think Russia has shown a complete disregard, not only for the lives of the people in Ukraine but for its own soldiers. 

"We are sitting here 12 months in and 188,000, actually more now, Russian soldiers are dead or injured, as a result of this catastrophic miscalculation and aggression by president Putin. 

"When someone has crossed the line to think it is ok to do that to your own people and is running effectively a meat grinder for an army I think he is not going to stop."

Sir Keir Starmer said he believed the UK has been stuck in a "crouched position" for too long, lacking the "confidence to move forward" and his five new "missions" for a Labour government will remedy that. 

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, the Labour leader said: "This is the big fixing the fundamentals to make sure that we can restore if you like the pride and purpose to Britain, the great potential that our country has. So they are long term missions, they are a statement of intent about how we intend to govern and they are very important missions. 

"The missions I am going to outline this morning are predominantly to do with the economy and to have the highest sustained growth in the G7 and sustained is the really important word in that. 

"But we also need to make sure the NHS is fit for the future, we need to make our streets safe, we need to make sure that we remove the barriers to opportunity for every child everywhere and we want to be a green clean power superpower country. 

"So big missions, big ambition and I am not ashamed to be ambitious for our country but this is about fixing the fundamentals to make sure that we can move forward as a country rather than stay in this almost crouched position that I think we have been in for many years now where we don’t have the confidence to move forward.”

Sir Keir Starmer will use a speech in Manchester this morning to set out his five new "missions" for a Labour government. 

Speaking to BBC Breakfast ahead of the address, the Labour leader said the missions would help to fix the problems which have left people across the country feeling like "nothing seems to be working". 

He said: "What we are setting out today is what we intend to do in government so the missions, five of them but also really importantly how we intend to achieve them, what does a mission driven government look like. 

"And the idea behind this is really based on I think the everyday frustrations that everybody has that almost nothing seems to be working, everything needs to be fixed and all we have really ever had for many years now is sort of sticking plaster politics."