In a recent parliamentary exchange, the new UK Government detailed its approach to engaging with all nations of the UK in the upcoming Strategic Defence Review.
This was in response to a question posed by James Cartlidge, Conservative MP for South Suffolk, regarding the steps the department plans to take to ensure inclusive engagement.
Luke Pollard, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, responded on 25th July 2024, outlining the extensive consultation process planned for the review.
Pollard said, “Defence is central not only to the security of the UK, but also to our shared prosperity and economic growth.” He assured that the review would be a UK-wide effort, not just the Government’s initiative.
Pollard highlighted that the reviewers will engage with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including serving military personnel, veterans, elected representatives, the Defence community, academia, and industry from across all regions of the UK.
He stated, “The reviewers will consult widely including serving military, veterans, elected representatives, the Defence community, academia and industry across the entirety of the UK.”
This approach, it is understood, aims to ensure that the Strategic Defence Review reflects the diverse perspectives and needs of all parts of the UK, thereby strengthening national security and contributing to economic growth.
Makes sense. Going to put a suggestion that will be shouted down by everyone: Include other countries in that – we have a very complicated system of alliances, those countries have their own thoughts and could be very useful in suggesting areas where they feel the UK could develop further that would be useful to those alliances.
You’re right, I hate that idea.
Why? Answer based on a military rather than nationalistic or political reasons – I’m talking about seeing how our allies feel about strengthening and enhancing our contribution.
see my previous answer.. I know i may be succinct…but ….its to the point.
🙂
Unless I read it wrong, it say’s all nations of the UK?? so that would mean Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
and England maybe? 😅
I’m pretty sure England’s a nation as well. I know they have their own rugby team so it’s probably the case 😀
nah fuck em ..let em buy their own shit
Countries don’t have their own thoughts. Countries are non-sentient geographical entities. As soon as you phrase it properly you realize the problem. It’s the population of the countries that have thoughts: millions upon millions of people all disagreeing with each other. To take any single set of thoughts as representative of a country is a nonsense. Even just looking at UK countries as somhow separate entities is problematic. Everyone in any region of the UK should be eligible to put their thoughts to the review, and the Welsh should not have preferential input over the more numerous population of Yorkshire and Humberside just because the former group live in a nominally different country to London whereas the latter don’t.
Ask American politicians or industry what we should do and the only common answer will be to spend more of our money in America buying kit that will help America. If you mean we should bring in military advisors from Germany or Japan, I really don’t think it will play well in the press.
I suggest an electorally significant portion of the populations of the three nations and province would wish to sever ties with the U.S.A and adopt a hostile stance towards Israel. We must never formulate our national interests around enthusiasms and extra-national identities but broad humanitarian principles. People forget who struggled with blood sweat and tears to establish worldwide institutions of law and justice, inadequate and never above criticism as maybe, but demonstrably more humane than anything that was before or might be to come.
Please Get it right 🤔🙏💰💰💰
I’m sure that Sinn Fein will have a novel perspective on British defence planning. And does it make any sense to consult the SNP who also want to break up the state?
The SNP are not the same thing as the Scots
The general election showed that, among other things
Plus they can’t bang on about their ‘mandate’ as they had their arses kicked in the election
But if you consult the elected representatives of the nations of the UK, that’s who you talk to.
So more about politics than defence, ideal.
It’s hard as we have to be realistic about we can achieve and that means not going it alone and so it’s purely subjective what is useful. If there was a reality non political review a it would conclude is we as a nation can’t afford to achieve what politicians think can be done. Not helped by daily mail / express etc seemingly believe we still have an empire and are a top tier nation when it comes to global politics, which hasn’t been true since ww2.
Personally I would like that position reversed and focus on ability to go it alone and build a capability around it, even if that means focusing in a very small conflict as realistically we can take on directly any of the nations that pose a threat to international stability alone, but we might have to do a proxy war over one of our overseas territories.
No way.
This declinism talk is absolutely nonsense.
Bezemenov was right. The UK is completely demoralised and that’s the issue.
Just look at economic policy and the amount of curtailment. The country has less debt to GDP than every G7 nation barring Germany (who use more frivolous accounting), but everything is unaffordable in the UK.
We literally change our economic policy the most in the G20. We are globally notorious for cutting plans midway through and acting on the short-term.
The Chinese use us as an example of why democracy doesn’t work in their schools. We can’t even build a high speed railway like without cutting it into a stump which terminates into a London suburb.
All of this is a choice.
The Tories recently cut taxes 1% of GDP. That could’ve completely reversed 2010 era austerity or even been used to roughly match the spending of the entire EU or US on industry. The country also has the second lowest debt in the G7.
The issue with the UK is that we don’t follow through on anything. Everything gets curtailed and given up upon with the idea that ‘it’s too expensive’ or ‘it’s too difficult’.
There is 0% chance that we would do something like France did solo in developing Rafale. We actually have a marginally bigger economy and less debt.
The ‘hung up on empire’ narrative is an old trope within a certain subsection of the middle class, which never actually existed even at the height of the empire. The average man had little to no connection to the empire.
or the Guardian who just like to undermine…still I suppose they is so much clevererererer that wot I is…apart from that what a load of bolox
Struggling to see the value in this, especially as all the devolved institutions have significant separatist movements which have historically been regularly at odds with UK defence and security policy. In NI’s case the largest party was actively engaged in armed conflict with UK forces.
We would be crazy to invest too much into Northern Ireland. It is fairly obvious due to demographics that there will be a border poll within the next 15 years and NI will be unifying with the Republic, and having part of your military industrial complex in a militantly neutral country that fundamentally dislikes you as a nation is very bad policy.
So we just concetnrate on England then….seems fair enough to me…a tad centralist but fair enough none the less…
When the costs of health care and people losing their jobs etc are made crystal clear to the public I wouldn’t bet your house on the result of a vote!
True, nobody in the Republic is looking forward to the economic dead weight of NI, but who knows.
You could always join us👍😂
It would be a challenge for sure but not impossible. German unification was far more challenging and it was successfully completed in a generation.
It’s not impossible,but as Mark has said it would cost the South £Ms to achieve.Thousands of jobs here depend on the Govt and public sector/NHS etc. so all those people and dependents are jobless and that’s when the troubles start again only this time in reverse!
Yes and no, areas like Healthcare is safe in terms of numbers, the problem there would be the fact that NHS NI pay is so low compared to the Republic. Same for many of the social welfare benefits, that’s where the costs would be, along with of course the huge increase in security and defence related spending.
Germany was divided for less than half the time the island has been at this stage, and even with the size of their economy incurred significant hits and has left political divisions, not too mention never had the historical divisions the North has within itself and between North and South.
Don’t fool yourself, if the time comes that both North and South vote for unification, you are likely talking an economy impact on par with the 08 Crash and huge political upheaval.
That is the challenge I mentioned and unification would take time to come about. It would not happen overnight.
Everyone makes a big thing about defence reviews but it’s only and expensive way of saying we need more ships and fighter jets but don’t have the budget for it.
Need to think ahead regarding investment in H&W when Ireland unifies.
Those industries would not change if there was unification.
Anything defence related would realistically, the U.K. would likely not order major projects from H&W for example since it wouldn’t be a British yard, and Dublin isn’t going to be spending enough to keep the yard going.
The UK may not but the EU could make use of it, meaning Dublin could keep it going. Money Talks.
Yes and defence spending tends to be important to politicians, particularly making sure it’s spent where it buys votes for them. The European nations with defence industries aren’t going to see much value in investing in Ireland particularly with the likely instability that will come, hell the U.K. hasn’t seen much value in NIs capacity either.
It would actually be in the EUs best interest to see Ireland and the North thrive during such a unification to ease potential instability. Maintaining current defence industries in the North and investment in other areas is a high probability if this was to happen.
Tend to agree. Just saying that in 10 or 20 year’s time the policy might not be to build all RN warships in UK. Aren’t some T31 modules coming from Poland?
I recall similar happened in 2004, views were sought from a wide spectrum of society, from industry to military vets to civilians with an interest, me.
Result, 14 RN ships gone, including 3 T23, T45s down to 6 as T42s paying off accelerated.
RAF lost several Sqns at that time too.
In that era, the size of the military was also of concern on defence forums such as this one that existed at the time.
They did not listen, or care.
So this sort of thing has little weight with me, any idiot with even a partial following of the UK military over the last 20 years knows that endless cuts are the issue.
It’s posturing nonsense.
Weird to us looking in from the outside world that the UK is actually 4 seperate nations. Is there any difference between states and nations?
Consulting all the UK nations is a good way to get issues properly discussed e.g. the SNP objection to the UK nuclear deterrent vs the economic and industrial benefits to Scotland; the political benefits to the UK both globally and in Europe. Neither Scotland nor NI voted to leave the EU.
Also it’s a good way to get a Sinn Feinn commitment to defence industries and sites in NI and to open a discussion on future wider cooperation between UK and Ireland. Also, if the government wants to make a step ( over 2.5%) increase in defence spending at the expense of health and education it has to be able to demonstrate it has consulted properly and that there is agreement that it is doing so in a way that links the defence policy into its UK jobs and economic growth agenda.