Professor Michael Clarke told us that both Integrated Review documents (the original and the refresh) had demonstrated that ministerial priorities were that “Britain should have a series of multiple roles that it can perform in the world and that it has high aspirations to a significant place in world politics, at a time of darkening international relations”.205 Professor Malcolm Chalmers agreed, describing the strategic narrative in both documents as “very geographically and thematically ambitious and not having a very strong sense of prioritisation”.206 Both suggested that the documents had the potential to enable the Prime Minister to make demands of government departments which they were not necessarily being equipped to fulfil.207 Professor Clarke told us: all three branches of the services, in their own separate ways, are inadequate to the tasks that the refresh suggests they will undertake.208