At what point does Britain say enough is enough over Russia?

Britain should regard itself as already being in a sustained confrontation with the Russian state, Graeme Downie has told the House of Commons, listing ten hostile Russian activities against the UK and challenging the government to say which of them, if any, would sit above the threshold of conflict.

The Labour MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, described “not a conventional shooting war, but a prolonged campaign of hostile activity directed against our people, our infrastructure, our economy, and our democratic institutions,” and put the definitional question directly: “We often hear the phrase ‘below the threshold’. But what exactly is the threshold? The answer to the question matters because it is the hard line in deterrence and key when considering rearmament.”

Citing the written answer he received from the Ministry of Defence this week, in which a minister said detail on how the department would respond to certain activities versus others could not be provided as it would assist adversaries, Downie said he would not burden the department with further written questions and instead put his examples to the House. He asked whether it is sub-threshold to use a cyberattack to steal the electoral register, to steal the email addresses of Foreign Office diplomats, to use ransomware to disrupt NHS patient care and contribute to the deaths of UK patients, to use lasers to threaten the safety of RAF pilots, or to target a major UK business with a cyberattack costing hundreds of millions of pounds and meaningfully affecting Bank of England interest rate decisions.

“One has to assume the government does consider all of these sub-threshold because Russia has undertaken all of these activities in recent times,” he said, before going further and asking whether poisoning UK citizens on UK soil, launching drones from shadow fleet vessels to monitor UK airbases, recruiting activists over messaging apps to commit arson attacks against property, endangering a UK aircraft carrier by dropping sonobuoys in its immediate vicinity, or attempting an arson attack against the British Prime Minister sit below the threshold, noting that “once again, Russia has undertaken all of these activities.”

Each item on the list corresponds to previously unprecedented events, from the Salisbury poisonings and the Synnovis ransomware attack linked to a patient death, through the lasers directed at RAF P-8 crews monitoring the Yantar and the Jaguar Land Rover attack attributed to a Russian group, to the Tu-142 that dropped tens of sonobuoys close to HMS Prince of Wales in the Norwegian Sea last week. Downie pointed listeners to the tracking work of Emma Burrows of the Associated Press for those wanting to follow the pattern across Europe, and closed the passage with the question underneath all ten examples: “At what point do governments in the UK say enough is enough?”

He argued that clarity is itself a component of deterrence, saying “Preparedness for war is not warmongering. War fighting readiness begins long before the first shot is fired, but it must start with an honest assessment and acknowledgement of the threats that we face,” he said, calling for the government to make clear to the public and adversaries what it means by sub-threshold, because preparedness and public clarity “are the best way to ensure that Vladimir Putin and those around him never conclude that Britain lacks the capability or the determination to defend itself.”

Responding, Calvin Bailey, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans and People, agreed with the argument and made the case for greater openness with the public. “I believe he’s absolutely right. I actually think one of the ways we can go about building trust in government and building trust in how government responds to a crisis is by trusting the people with the information,” the Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead said. “The people will be the ones who can press us to take the action that they know requires to be taken. I think we must use our secrets more effectively.”

The minister argued the debate should move beyond percentages, saying “the central question cannot just be whether we spend 3 per cent or 3.5 per cent, or some other percentage of GDP. The real question must be what capability are we creating,” and crediting the Defence Investment Plan, despite its delay, with “a commitment to fighting the next war and not the last one,” citing improvements in pay, housing and support for serving personnel and their families that he said are lifting recruitment, retention and morale, and welcoming the decision to build six Common Combat Vessels as part of the move to hybrid warfare.

The speech delivers on the pressure Downie has applied through the week, following his written questions asking the MOD to define sub-threshold and to say which activities would sit above it, which drew the answer that such detail would assist adversaries, and his comments to the UK Defence Journal after the theft of government login credentials, in which he called for the government to rapidly increase UK preparedness and ensure the public know the impact of these attacks on their daily lives.