Putin claimed 88% of all votes in last week’s Russian presidential poll. A total sham of an election but a serious moment for UK defence.
Over the next decade, we face Putin’s regime and an active alliance of aggression from autocrats who have contempt for international law and freely squander the lives of their own people.
Threats are increasing, just as concerns are also increasing over the state of our Armed Forces. And some of the loudest voices now joining this chorus of concern are coming from Conservatives.
This article is the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the UK Defence Journal. If you would like to submit your own article on this topic or any other, please see our submission guidelines.
I was in the House of Commons last week as MPs from the Government’s benches took turns to argue that the Conservatives’ defence plans are not good enough, with one saying his own Ministers “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Today, I will be debating two important reports from cross-party Committees, both with Conservative majorities, that have dangerous warnings about the UK’s military power and readiness.
The Public Accounts Committee said that the MOD’s current equipment plan is the worst ever on managing budgets, arguing it is “not credible” and “many defence procurement programmes are being delayed.”
The Defence Committee found that our UK Armed Forces “have capability shortfalls and stockpile shortages and are losing personnel faster than they can recruit them.”
Concern is not confined to Conservative backbenchers. The Security Minister, the Indo-Pacific Minister and even the Defence Secretary are now publicly challenging their own Government’s defence policy in the press. While Putin wages war in Europe, Ministers are warring with each other.
This is clearly a serious breakdown in the collective ministerial responsibility of Government, but I am most concerned about the serious state of the UK armed forces.
Conservative colleagues are right. There are serious problems in defence which need fixing. What signal does it send to our adversaries when our forces have been ‘hollowed out’ since 2010; when the British Army has been cut to the smallest size since Napoleon; when recruitment targets have been missed every year for 14 years; when satisfaction with service life has fallen to record lows?
What signal does it send to our allies when our NATO obligations are being undermined due to delays and mismanagement in vital defence projects such as E7 Wedgetail surveillance planes and a modern war fighting division.
This is now a different era, demanding different decisions but Labour will always do what is required to defend this country. When we last left government, Britain was spending 2.5% of GDP on defence.
Defence must match the threats we face, and as we don’t have access to any of the classified threat assessments, costs or military advice in Opposition, we will conduct a Strategic Security and Defence Review (SDSR) within the first year to fully understand the state of our Armed Forces, the nature of threats and the capabilities needed.
Labour has five strategic priorities to keep Britain safe – reinforce UK homeland protections, ensure UK NATO obligations are fulfilled in full, make allies our strategic strength, direct defence investment first to British business, and renew the nation’s contract with those who serve and the families who support them.
Leadership in defence should put country before party. We are proud of our UK Armed Forces and will always listen to anyone who wants to do the best for our personnel, veterans and their families. That’s why all political parties will be invited to contribute to our defence review, if Labour does form the next Government.
We want it to be Britain’s plan to defend our country better, not just Labour’s.
Ben Wallace as consultant to Labour defence policy? Sure, give it a go….we’ve got to change how we do things at present.
Somebody needs to get a handle on how we’re doing things and it doesn’t really matter what colour tie they wear. Warographics – Is the British Military ready for a Major war, on YouTube gives a good summary which doesn’t say anything the more informed on this site have been saying for a long time but does make me wonder how we actually get politicians to sit up and listen? It seems the time for emails to local MP’s and strongly worded letters to cabinet ministers are going to cut it here…
Many of the MPs are not standing again, a lot more will not get elected. We need a reboot asap. Sunak and Hunt need to call election. Continuing this zombie government, putting party before country for another 6 months is really criminal negligence.
I saw that. Warographics was 100% right, and it’s seriously depressing.
Id rather trust Osma Bin Laden than any current British MP regards the defence of the country.
Hi M8, I find myself in a bit of a quandary with this article !
On one hand it’s unheard of any leading Politician to be highlighting Defence as a Major issue in the run up to a General Election. The usual mantra is there are “no votes in Defence” so just pay lip service to it and then ignore it if you get into power. Not even Maggie did it, just the usual general comments and then tried to shaft defence and leave John Nott to take the blame.
For Labour to do so well, I’m actually Smack Gobed as it is really unusual, it’s completely counter intuitive to the norm.
On the other hand we have the Tories led by Bill & Ben (Sunak and Hunt) who are saying very little and hoping no one notices.
To cap it all we have Shapps who has never impressed except for a natural ability to survive, but is actually not doing too badly considering the state of the MOD budget.
I’m actually beginning to think that Healey and Shapps may just have been looking at some of the recent polling data done by You.Gov which I’ve seen.
Depending on which party you are likely to vote for it’s either 54 or 56
% in favour of increased Defence spending.
People are watching TV and not liking what they see, and are beginning to realise that the World is getting to be a very dangerous place. So rather than moaning about waiting lists; maybe we should be doing something to stop someone lengthening them.
So Mr Healy, just to be clear, are you stating that you would deal with the mismanagement of the wedgetails by buying 2 airframes to being us up to the original 5?
Will you be committing to bringing defence spending back up to the 2.5% it was when you were last in office?
What’s the best there won’t be a clear answer?
One hopes , certainly the MSM are running the alarm bells .
But I am yet to be convinced anything will change and Mr Gealey will not have a severe dose of Amnesia.
Increase it to trnn percent and there will be no obvious improvement in ten years. The money would be better used to improve the production proses
The hollowing out of the military did not start in 2010 and just because we spent more when Labour was in power that did not translate to investment as much of that spending was on costly wars. We had 37 Destroyers and Frigates in 1997 when Labour took power and the Type 45 being cut from 12 to 6 made the per ship cost more expensive AND directly contributed to the current hollowed out state we are in. Not to just pick on the Labour governments of the past as the Tories have continued the legacy of wasteful decisions that end up costing us more in the long run (looking at you CATOBAR QE).
I know Mr Healy won’t, or can’t commit to a number but at least give us a vision of the military you want to build? Is it not the military that contained peer rivals at the end of the Cold War?
Haters will be haters; just ignore post war perception of facts.
The reality is in the 2000s we were still partially drawing down from a Cold War high, if you look at the defence budget as a GDP% it went from 5%ish in 1991 down to around 2.5% by 2000 and then steadied out…the 2000s were always going to see a draw down…in reality 37 escorts was way to high and never sustainable under the 2.5% peacetime budge..23 escorts was not unreasonable for that risk assessment ( Russia was profoundly weak and had only just started showing the first signs of something threatening, china was seen as a friend)….you have to see the actions and spending against context…by 2014 the world profoundly changed..this is the timeframe of Russias invasion of Ukraine ( the Ukraine Russia war really started in 2014 the west just pretended it did not) china had by that time told the world it was having the South China Sea and the 9 dash line policy was happening….the reality was the new Cold War started around 2014 and the Conservative government ignored it….it’s got worse and to the point we are now in a pre war state not a Cold War state, chain started a massive armament, civil and economic hardening process in 2018ish and told the world in 2021-22 it’s going to war in 2027+ and is not hiding any of its massive preparations)…but still the conservative government did nothing…..that’s the crime..you can complain about labours record all you like..they did not face a world war and do nothing..
You make a fine counter point friend and you have my agreement for the most part, especially the part about the Tories being more to blame, I just don’t think Labour has the ability to sit on a high horse when their cuts were clearly too deep (especially in hindsight). What frustrates me the most is the empty rhetoric coming from Labour with no vision nor a clear promise. As terrible as the Reform party looks their pledge to go from 2.5 and then to 3 may fool people into voting for them, so this Labour indecisiveness is pushing people to the Populists and the chaos that will bring.
I don’t disagree, I honestly think both parties need to come out and commit to 3%…the problem is that if either party does the other will use the uncommitted spending and your irresponsible around the economy line and most of the British public will swallow that line hook line and sinker..if Labour did promise 10billion extra to defence …they would be instantly attacked for it….as would the conservatives.
Its very sad as everyone pretty much agrees we are in a pre war situation and to prevent a war very significant deterrent is needed and if that does not work we need to be ready…but neither side will take the first step…I honestly think this is such a risk that the the parties need to depoliticise the discussion and actually both come out with a joint statement on realistic spending against the threat…that way both parties can commit to what they know they need (3%+) without political impact.
I also think the public need to more scared to be honest..the west is suffering massive levels of hubris…I just do not think anyone really understands what war with china, Russia ans possible Iran and North Korea means ( and it’s very likely we would end up at war with all…as that’s how these conflagrations play out, there is no way a countries like no North Korean and Iran would not take advantage )…at the very best ( winning quickly ) it would thread our economies and kill hundreds of thousands of service personnel across allies..realistically it would drag into years of stalemate until one side collapsed from complete strategic exhaustion ( even if we did win our economies would all be utterly destroyed and the dead would be in the millions) worst case is nuclear war and the human race goes out…I just don’t think people actually get the stakes…a world war will come into their homes and may even kill them.
Lets be honest its cause and effect, Tories didn’t have to do anything on defence because the oppostiion had no credible policy on defence, government are only as strong as the opposition that takes them to task. This is why I refuse to take sides with either party, they blame each other when they both played a part.
To be honest Expat on this one I as much blame the voting public as anything..if either party had suggested a 3% spend the other would have gone…but where will you get the money…that could go on tax cuts to hard working families…that could go to services…and as the public don’t understand the present risks around defence or really care about our armed forces,.the side that did commit to 3% spend on defence would have got a ton of negative press and lost vote share….if the public could be bothered to educate itself on geopolitical risk and what that means to our nation and the need for defence then both parties may have actually spent more money on defence or promised more in manifestos…as it is defence spending comes below bus in the UK electorates mind.
It doesn’t help when chlorinated chicken was a higher on electioneering agenda than defence. So political class needs to do much more in selecting real issues to fight elections on instead of low grade points scoring. But we are where we are.
The clearest signal we can send Mr Putin to “ do what he wants” is complacency.
We urgently need an honest defence review ( non treasury led) and a plan, enshrined in law how the defence budget will increase, year on year to a level the defence review indicates is necessary. I suspect 3%.
As distasteful as spending on defence is, spending on health, education etc means nothing if the country cannot be defended.
A strong defence is a lot cheaper than a war,
Agree with all that you have said but before we chuck more money at defence and waste £billions we need some other changes.
To avoid sounding too negative somethings have on the face of it gone well to date such as the Type 31 and P8 programmes but there are too many others that are awful. To state the obvious we need to adopt went well across the board.
There are always two events I keep in my mind as they both directly affected how this country fought wars. The first was Winston Churchill’s decision to not have the Treasury involved in his war cabinet. “Military expediency requires the decisions to be made by the War Cabinet of five ministers and the chiefs of staff”. The second was Thatcher. Upon hearing the Falklands had been invaded. The former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan visited Margaret Thatcher at Chequers. He gave her advice based on his experience of sitting on war cabinets from WWII to Suez. “Ensure you only have “doers” in the small team of no more than five, plus Military. Choose those who will be dealing with the war day to day. Do not include the Treasury, advise the Chancellor of its decisions and instruct him to facilitate them. If you want to win this war, you exclude the Treasury from the outset”.
To me, we need to have a decent review that does the same as the above. What are our military requirements to defend our Islands, overseas territories and interests? What do we need to ensure we play a full role in NATO? Outline requirements, the size of the Royal Navy, British Army and the RAF. Work it out based on spending at 2.5% of GDP rising to 3.0%. Use the 0.5% extra to increase your stocks, because it’s the one thing Ukraine has shown us. Stocks based on 90 days of intense war fighting are grossly under-assessed. Ukraine uses a lot of shells simply to hold the territory it has won back from Russia since the start of the 2022 expanded invasion of Ukraine—as many as 6,000-155mm rounds daily (Ukraine’s Defense Secretary Oleksij Reznikov said Ukraine needs 356,400 shells a month “for the successful execution of battlefield tasks,” which works out to 11,800 shells per day). At the start of the war, it was assessed at a need of 2,000 a day. NATO has increased shell manufacturing, its members are expected to produce only 1.3 million 155mm shells in 2024 and more capacity is slated to come online in 2025.
The additional 0.5% between 2.5%-3.0% of GDP, would hardly scratch the surface of hoping to match Russia’s ability to win the artillery war. It’s clear that once the missiles and smart bombs have been used, it will be 1914 trench warfare with mass artillery duels again.
Have you listened to last Saturdays “The week in Westminster”, if not you should it pretty well nails it.
Lord Nicholas Macpherson former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury was on about 20 mins into the programme.
He was asked about the need for extra Defence Spending “Well I’m a former Treasury Official and so hate giving money to MOD”.
I kid you not. Check it out BBC Sounds 🙁
And ensure that you have leaders
I agree with your more detailed comments.
Mr Healey is making a lot of noise, I will not hold my breath that it turns into tangible action.
Blaming the last guy is easier especially when it comes to defence.
I am all for supporting the U.K. arms manufacturers but when the same arms manufacturers , return the favour by chocking to near death the golden goose, it does more than annoy me.
Treasury rules already prohibit single source procurement where avoidable. It just results in a long-drawn out bidding and tender evaluation process- resulting in a procurement process that is too complex and too long. In the end it’s always going to end up as a single source procurement for major systems, because you can’t buy LM aircraft from Boeing or vice versa.
“but before we chuck more money at defence and waste £billions we need some other changes…”
It’s already too late to mess about before increasing budgets. Rearrangements will take too long and have too little effect to be a contingent requirement.
Of course we should bring recruitment back in-house, but why wait until the current recruitment contracts are finished or cancelled before adding more money to the resource budget? You are also doing what the politicians do. You are making decisions such as COTS/MOTS vs bespoke as a policy decision rather than allowing procurement specialists to decide on an case-by-case basis.We need to employ a small number of the right people and trust them to get it right. (Remember empowerment?) Sure, they will mess up sometimes, and so will any method you choose. Accept that, learn lessons and move forward, rather than trying to add another layer of governance every time there’s a mistake.
And before any of that we must chuck money at Defence.
Single sourcing is more likely as we switch to UK only supply and so is the purchase of non off the shelf.
All absolutely true…
3% ring fenced on defence with a proper stable plan for the next 25 years is what’s needed.
This should be brought in alongside fundamental reform regarding procurement, with a military industrial strategy that actually works for the armed forces, rather than primarily for the industrial base as a job creation scheme!
SDSR’s should still be held every 5 years, but should be strictly non political and contributing to the long term plan, with changes in the geo political situation and technology factored into any defence planning alterations.
So, that’s what needs doing, unfortunately, we have self serving, egotistical politicians who don’t give a rats arse about anything but themselves, so sod all will change…
I don’t agree.
I think SDSRs should be rolling 30 year programmes – the cr@p that gets poured on Labour for Mid-90s decisions, 30 years after the event is laughable and yet the SSBN and carriers will be in service how long? Those are budget lines that can be extrapolated and fed into future predicted pensions – as can manpower costs and pensions.
However, of course 5, 10, 15, 20 year thoughts need to be fed in but 5 years is a short time in analysis and for the money put into Defence analysis in the round, we need more actionable product.
By that same standard, should MoD officials and UK armed forces officers expect to get away with a 2 year tickle at Defence Procurement? The evidence suggests no and their feet held to the fire after at least five years OR draw your pension (reduced).
We simply can not reward Procurement failure with promotion.
I certainly agree re all aspects of procurement.
It needs to be fundamentally reformed.
So many cases of appalling mismanagement, it’s hard to pick a single example…
I think the worst case is still the L85A1, an appalling piece of crap that was fundamentally compromised in both design and build, with serious reliability issues that were both known and thoroughly understood as the rifle entered production.
So many people absolutely knew the facts and yet 300,000 were ordered anyway.
I’m not sure if that flawed rifle actually cost anyone their life, I would however be surprised if it didn’t.
Had Gulf War 1 become a more entrenched affair we would most certainly have lost people directly because of that rifle.
The problem is we are beyond any 25 year plans…our enemies are preparing and planning for war with us in the near future….we need a crash plan for an immediate max effort at deterrence…as a major war/world war will be catastrophic. 25 year plans can come later…you don’t plan when the patient is in peri arrest you act and throw the kitchen sink at them to try and prevent the arrest….what you should have had is a good plan to prevent peri arrest…..but I fear we will wait until the patient has arrested ( war) before we react.
so for me we need a crash program of 3%+ when the risk has settled to a steady state we can move to a planned cycle.
Bravo.
Exactly and no government of any stripe is going to have to invent a case for joining our closest allies in building up defence while Putin is in the Kremlin. However, tremendous gaps to fill due to complacency, negligence and incompetence.
Great words but that is exactly what they are. All parties in government since I first went to sea in 1982 have cut, cut, cut and now wonder why UK armed forces are in the state they are – shame on you all no matter your politics, lets hope Putin doesn’t come because the present polictical system will be the first to run and be executed.
Surely the headline should read ‘The Government in Power should put Defence before Party’.?.
Labour are pretty much going to be the Government in power within months. I doubt they will put defence before party. You can see the buy British element is to help the unions and burgeon their membership for instance, I suspect that element will target blue collar workers. I guess those who vote Labour would argue otherwise but as a non align seems a afairly obvious policy to keep union backers happy. So yeah PArty before defence every time lol.
I,ve panic to the sdr, of course more cuts are to come doesn,t matter labour or conservative, none of them are interested in british defence.
I was serving the last time a Labour Govt were in and the prospect of anther one does not exactly fill me with confidence! No govt seem to be capable of seeing past the NHS when it comes to funding.
No surprise there. Any government is going to focus on the big ticket items; pensions, benefits, social care and health + taxes, interest rates. I see the main issue is that we are about to spend 6 months electioneering and then the new ( probably labour ) government will take another 12 months to carry out a defence review. I don’t think we can wait. As other posters are pointing out there are some decisions / actions / purchases which are not contentious and could be made fairly quickly. Also see Ex- Marine’s post – don’t make the Treasury a hurdle: just get the right people to decide what we have to do and tell the Treasury to facilitate it.
I agree there, which is why NI should be hypothecated to NHS spending – and watch it come down as people understand the true cost of the NHS. You want to be more radical? Add pensions.
Nothing to do with Govt spending but the employed would be howling over NI.
Defence could then share a bigger piece of the tax pie.
So the way I read that is, goodbye expeditionary capabilities, beyond the NATO area, yes?
Some of the very assets that set this nation apart and enable us to act globally, from bases to other strategic assets including our 5 eyes infrastructure.
We already have strength in allies.
Because how else to afford to improve UK home defence, whatever that entails, and a “warfighting Division”
Which should be 3 manoeuvre Brigades by the way, not 2.
Also, the situation in the Red Sea isn’t NATO.
Op Shader isn’t NATO.
AUKUS isnt NATO.
GCAP isn’t NATO.
We have defence obligations and commitments that are beyond NATO, so what happens to them?
And also, how to combat hostile states in the grey zone throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia? None of that is NATO.
Unless you plan to just let them get on with it?
Put CASD capital replacement cost back to the treasury reserve would get my vote!
Mate I’m sorry to disagree with you; but shouldn’t your comments about “expeditionary capabilities” now be in the past tense after the LPD anouncement and the C130’s gone
No mate, as by expeditionary I also mean our logistic tail, from overseas bases to the RFA, to the Rangers, to the SF, our transport fleet, and a host of other stuff shall I more accurately describe as offensive in nature. Sitting defending the UK and fulfilling the armed forces covenant is one step away from Foots madness in the early 80s and Neal Kinooks vow to convert Tornado GR1s to interceptors.
We need the ability to attack.and impose ourselves on other nations. That I’m sure offends Labour deeply and undermines, I fear, their entire “Defence” policy.
M8 your talking about little more than raiding forces not true expeditionary. No LPD, no LPH, just 3 bays and only one RFA to support the carriers or anything else with solid stores. As for the logistics tail and Transport fleet, we can’t even refuel our Helicopters or C17s in flight, nor the Tankers for that matter.
You just need to look at last years fiasco in Sudan to gauge how bad it really is. France has far fewer heavy lift aircraft than we do, but they ran rings round us.
And yep what you say about Labour politicians in the past is absolutely true and todays are rather nervous due to Blair’s fondness of intervening everywhere.
It always makes me laugh that most folks say Blair recapitalised the U.K. Amphibious force with 1 new LPH, 2 LPD and 4 LSD, truth is he didn’t.
It was John “Boring” Major he’d ordered the lot as a deliberate reaction to his immediate predecessor.
You can laugh about Foot and Kinnock but just remember that they only talked about it.
It was 2 Tory Politicians who actually got closest to deliberately destroying our ability for out of NATO area intervention and got a lot of young men killed as a result of the signal it sent out.
Enter stage right Maggie and John Nott who announced they were scrappIng the LPDs, the overseas patrol ship, selling off the Carriers and everything else. Just to concentrate solely in the Northern European theatre and home defence as it kept Ronnie R happy having his unsinkable carrier secure.
Good Grief they even re invented the Home Guard with the “Home Service Force”.
If I were a betting man I think there are changes afoot, I wouldn’t be surprised if the MRSS tie up with the Netherlands leads to a major change in role.
And by that I mean a much lighter raider style amphibious force with smaller 10k tonne Multi purpose ships.
Thanks mate. Fingers crossed eh!
Riddle me this Mr D
Labour has five strategic priorities to keep Britain safe –
1. reinforce UK homeland protections,
2. Ensure UK NATO obligations are fulfilled in full,
3. make allies our strategic strength,
4. direct defence investment first to British business, and
5. renew the nation’s contract with those who serve and the families who support them.
1. They are not shying away from.
2. They’ve said 100%
3. Where did they say NATO Allies? What does depth mean to you? Manoeuvre space? Thinking space? Reaction space? So where do Labour step back ‘Allies’
4. AUKUS is a prime mover, T26, future aircraft systems… all involve Allies but, putting money into our pot.
5. And nobody can gainsay that one.
Are you aware of the little boy who cried wolf?
Eyes on Angela Raynor, whos brother served in Iraq, she’s street savvy, tough as boots and not daft.
She’s a astute politician too.
No mention of any commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% or beyond, guess that wont be happening under a Labour government despite the author’s sniping.
The Cons have emptied the Safe, Chest, under the Mattress, in the Loft and even the Downpipe.
Where should Labour get the cash from? The printing press?
Oh, the Cons did that and look at the shit we are now in.
The foreign aid budget should be slashed in the same way as defence has had to endure it’s worth everybody googling how much and where it ball goes to. Ditto th BBC licence fee money allocation. You’ll be amazed and very angry.
Thinpinstripedline.blogspot.com did a really informative article on foreign aid, last year.
There are a lot of things need taking out of the political arena where they are just toys used for political point scoring. Defence is just one of them.
Our archaic political system is short term by design. Totally unsuited for the 21st century where 25 (or longer) year plans and commitments are needed to meet modern complexities.
The country is condemned to failure until there is a radical overhaul.
Not saying it’s an easy thing to fix but nobody even dares to touch the root of cause of so many problems.
Completely agree, the world is in such a deadly state we need the defence discussion to be depoliticised…both major parties need to agree a spending plan for defence and both committee to the same level of spending.
The NHS needs to also be depoliticised…the Germans have managed to do it..how much the German public pay and the healthcare system’s budgets are set by an apolitical process…so the German public pay what is required and it’s got nothing to do with political point scoring or the treasury.
Labour is Starmer’s party now so unless he says something I don’t see a reason to listen.
We all need to just wait and see what will be in the Manifestos as firm commitments,
We do know what is in the SNP one. “Vote for us if you want the Tories out”, I kid you not that’s it.
A desperate plea for votes based purely on hatred to try to avoid getting a walloping in Scotland by Scottish Labour.
Manifesto s are worthless from the minute the ink drys on them
True 👍 I’ll second that
CNN is reporting that Russia is making a 3 ton glide bomb; never mind the GPS quality feel the width. Bloomberg is reporting that Putin is raising Russian defence spending to 6% of GDP. The Daily Telegraph carries an article arguing that Putin is openly preparing for a long conventional war with NATO. We need to hustle. We do need to move the country and the economy onto something close to a war footing and rearm. Taxes and borrowing may have to rise. Forget your fortnight on the Costa Brava and a new EV car….think Blackpool or Clacton for a week and a bus pass.
It’s now more than 6% GDP…Russia is spending around 40% of its entire state budget on defence and security….the U.S. have estimated that chinas security spend could actually be 10-11 times its what is published ( 1.7% GDP published) .
As just this month china has now removed “Peaceful” from its reunification with Taiwan statements and replaced it with the term “firm”.
Just wait for Putin and others to possibly take advantage of while nearly the whole world is watching the Olympics and after Macron’s comments on Ukraine. Appalling timing and did anything need to be said? Now need to face any fallout.
Its all well and good, people whining about ‘what Labour did 14+ years ago. That was… 14+ years ago! The tories waltzed in, and took a JCB to Britain’s Military. That, is a fact, and people would do well to remember it!
Christ knows where the next incoming government is going to get the money, to start fixing Britain’s armed forces. It’s not broken, it’s well and truly banjaxed.
All anyone can hope, is that the Greens nor Lib Dems get in. If that were to be the case, then we are well and truly f…..
Reinforce Homeland Protection equals make sure the reserves are okay; ensure UK NATO committmenbts are met, so nothing to do there as they are already; make our allies our strategic strength, presumably by getting them to do motre of our job for us; commit to British business, but how exactly if there are no more orders; renew the nations contract with those who serve, by doing what? Buiding more houses? 😟
Also, inviting all parties to contribute. You have no choice as they are already entitled to. AS USUAL A LOT OF TALK AND NOTHING ACTUALLY SAID.
Geoff, it’s true. You’ve typed so much and contributed nothing. Sad but true.
😴 Short enough?
“Defence must match the threats we face, and as we don’t have access to any of the classified threat assessments, costs or military advice in Opposition, we will conduct a Strategic Security and Defence Review (SDSR) within the first year to fully understand the state of our Armed Forces, the nature of threats and the capabilities needed.” – That is technically true, but it is really just a superficially plausible excuse for failing to make any spending commitments. In reality there is sufficient open-source information available to Shadow Ministers to give a fairly good idea of the scale and nature of the threats and the scale of resource allocation required to mitigate them. You fool no-one Mr Healey.
Electioneering is a poker game. Labour are going to flush the Tories out before they make their play. The Tories are bluffing and have been for a while.
The sad truth is if Labour made a commitment to 3% spend on defence the conservative attack line would be…Ecconomic incompetence and spending money we don’t have…while knowing we need to spend that money….and people would believe it…Labour promising 3% GDP spend on defence would loss them votes…
They are already losing votes to apathy because they aren’t committing to anything. Perhaps some clear water between themselves and the Tories might get a few more people to the polling stations.
Defence, education & the NHS in an ideal world there should be cross party consensus, but even when a new minister from the same party is appointed they have to make changes to show they are now in charge & these changes will
always cost a lot of money & in many cases are probably unnecessary.
This obsession with 2.5% means nothing if a government implements a deal which reduces the UK’s GDP, there is high inflation & the pound becomes weaker against the US dollar & other currencies.
The navy should be doubled in size, the army should get ten thousand more soldiers and the RAF and the UK should show ambition outside of the Terra firma. Restore RAF Gibraltar. And re evaluate the notion of the au.k being an expeditionary model. The U.S has over a hundred F 15 at the UK bases, we should aim to match that kind of number.maybe look at why the RAF AND THE FAA are necessary most nations cannot afford to have two air forces
Trust a politician or political party? Biggest joke of the year so far. Slime balls the lot of them.
Ain’t that the truth
How much will Labour commit to funding Defence???
A question that Mr Healey has refused to directly answer on many occasions.
The idea that Labour would increase spending over the Conservatives is laughable.
Defence is the first priority of any Government and should override most other issues. Without adequate defence our own Government and way of life is at risk. Prioritising tax cuts for the well off and austerity for the rest harms our collective way of life. Tax cuts mean reduced public services and less economic resilience to cope with emergencies and threats both existing and or emerging. Those same wealthy tax cut beneficiaries then expect the less well off to fight (and win) their wars for them at the same time as hamstringing them through lack of equipment and wider resources.
The Peace Dividend was a fallacy. OK slow down initially but then bring it back up to strength as global circumstances change. Both Labour and Conservative are still thinking Peace Dividend. Far from going bakc to 2.5% we need to double that at least to be able to rebuild credibility. Outbreak of a future war will not allow us time to rearm.
We learned aphorisms when I went to primary school, and the one that came to mind reading this article was: fine words butter no parsnips.
I watched Mr Healey speech to the Policy Exchange a few weeks ago and read his words here carefully. At no point does he say Labour will spend more money. In fact at the Policy Exchange he implied the opposite. He talked about adding an extra layer of military strategic hedquarters within MOD, and doing so using “innovative and efficent ways” and “within necessarily tight fiscal constraints”. If those aren’t code for no more money coming from Sir Keir, perhaps somebody else could have a go at a translation.
Of course other things can be done, should be done, even must be done, but they will all fail without substantially more money going into Defence. If you can get 10% efficiency savings out of MOD after a few year’s effort, I’d applaud and say: well done. However it would be too little, too late. We need an extra 50%-100% additional Defence spending and we need it now. The longer we leave the necessary budget increase, the worse the situation will get and more we will end up needing. Let’s not get into another 40 year Cold War, please.
Your SDSR isn’t going to bump up pay by at least 15% so you are never going to solve the personnel crisis the only way I can see anyone tackling it is being grown up set the desired personnel level to 50k more people than it currently is and legally bind all future governments to a contract with Service Personnel saying if you do a full 22 years career you don’t pay taxes anymore but no one will ever have the guts to do it yet 120k Soldiers not paying tax will work out cheaper in the long run than any other half baked idea Westminster comes up with.
Blah blah, activist billions or defence?
This is from Conservatives now imagine Labour .
from fee.org
i have been reflecting on my thoughts around this article. At a high level, I think it’s pretty refreshing that we have a senior politician ( who is likely to be responsible for defence policy) , putting himself out there to a community of the electorate who are interested in and aware of defence issues. So in this the Labour shadow defence minister shows he cares about his brief because, let’s be honest the readership of the UK defence journal ( who may have an interest in defence) are not going to change the outcome of any seats in the election and defence itself literally has no votes in it.
So beyond a high level well done for engaging with interesting people what are are my thoughts.
Positive:
Moving to try and depoliticise defence spending and posture: would be very positive and powerful idea. There is far more power in this than almost anything else as it’s the corner stone of defence…no unity means a nation cannot fight and win a war…first we need political unity to allow us a step change in spending that matches the threat. Secondly political unity on defence ( if achieved) would on its own provide a very significant deterrent to our enemies. China and Russia both see political disunity as a key weakness of western nations that they are trying more and more to exploit…its one of the domains China will attempt to use to win any major war with the west and is already fighting this bit of the next war ( it employs 3 million people in the political warfare domain).
Threat and forces balancing this:recognition we are in a different world with a different level of risk and the fact our forces and defence posture need to reflect that risk.
Industrial strategy for defence: A nation wins or losses majors wars on far more than its standing forces..Industry capacity is fundamental to winning a major war, nations win or loss major wars on industrial output.
Home defence: The threat from Russia means that the home islands are again at risk from an existential threat..we have to accept that we may be in a war in which we are attacked at home by conventional or even nuclear forces…at present we have no meanful civil defence infrastructure. We also need to accept the reality of potent air attack on key infrastructure and ensure we have air defences that can manage sustained attack. We could see attack on sub sea infrastructure and need a focus on this. China will if we go to war attack our homeland with any unconventional means it can ( this is part of its war-fighting doctrine)…this includes cyber attacks, sabotage, use of civil disruption and dispute ( exploiting our populations fracture points and political warfare attacks)…even potential deniable biological attack ( you cannot prove where a virus came from…just looked at SARS Cov 2 ( did it or did it not come from a lab in china…who knows or can prove it ?) ….all need to be considered as part of domains in the next war.
as well as a focus on service personnel living accommodation…fundamental to recruit and retain..so good stuff.
The weakness:
immediacy of risk:lack of recognition of the immediacy of the threat..having a review within a year…we are therefore looking at a 2 year timescale for change so 2027…china is readying for war around the 2027 point…There is an immediate risk and a very significant deterrent is needed to mitigate that risk….the risk can be assessed open source..infact the definitive work on the risk is open source. I would like to see a day one plan…followed up by a defence review…things can be done now.
China: I’m not seeing anything about china..our present defence stance and that of our Closest Allies means that we are likely to be in a global war with china and its allies within a 5 year timeframe…what is the stance and the plan.
Thank you for expanding the conversation.
Yes. It is refreshing that we have a senior politician engaging here. Kudos to him. Also kudos to the UKDJ staff for getting us an article from the second defence spokesperson from a non-governing party within a few months, and as you say, Jonathan, one likely to be DefSec this time next year.
You point out some areas where you and I may have a slightly different take. Depoliticising defence spending is both a positive and a negative. If it makes it harder to achieve anything because all the major parties would have to agree before anything can be done, it could actually stop us moving as any one of the parties could act as a blocker. Perhaps I’m worrying unnecessarily on that score as this doesn’t seem to happen to the Defence Select Committee, whose series of publications over recent years have been pretty much on message.
I quite like the current Defence (and Security) Industrial Strategy. There are a lot of good ideas and commitments in it and while it doesn’t go far enough, it’s pointing in the right direction. It’s hampered by a Conservative proclivity to allow strategically important UK-owned businesses to be sold to foreign governments, so the R&D money spent in the UK by the UK too often turns into foreign IP.
I think the reason we don’t see anything about China is that Labour instinctively doesn’t like globalisation. The UK trades globally and requires globally reaching defence assets, not just to defend merchant shipping, but to ensure global instability can be countered, preferably before it happens. If a war in Ukraine has such bad knock-on effects on our economy, conflict over Taiwan, for example, would be many times as bad. Labour sees us as part of NATO, which is good, but less so as an actor outside of NATO, which we also need to be. We are a member of the G7, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and with more defence alliances and agreements than any other country in the world, including the US. Talking about 2% for NATO is symptomatic of damagingly narrow thinking.
I’m not sure how long we can go without properly considering home defence, but I feel Labour would be far more philosophically comfortable spending money here.
Yes it’s interesting would our defence strategy be stronger if it’s depoliticised and consensus based..as you say it could lead to paralysis…but I think if it’s set up right it can work and would work well providing a great deal of stability and strategic direction…a classic example of a depoliticised thorny issue is the German healthcare system..it’s set up so budget setting, funding and strategic decision making is non political, the only role the executive and legislative have is to oversee the system at a very high level as a monitor and to gain assurance the whole system works.
You may be correct about the china concern…but I don’t think many people have really thought through the NATO connection around any invasion of Taiwan and the level of contagion that will occur..which is based around the Chinese strategic view and their war fighting approach…so every nation in NATO needs to be very aware of the likely western pacific conflict and the fact it will end up a NATO war.
1) the present US stance that is any invasion of Taiwan will be met with force. The Chinese stance is that Taiwan will be unified with china ( they have now removed any reference to peacefully in this statement) and use the word firmly…they also have confirmed any nation preventing Unification will be met with force. So through their present stances war between the US and china is effectively inevitable.
2) as these are two superpowers most assessments agree neither will be able to knock the other out quickly and china has a paradigm of the long war ( it’s how they plan to fight the US..over years not months)…this will inevitably lead to attacks on the U.S. homeland ( Chinese warfighting is focused on using any and all means to destroy the will of the population and drive a political lead defeat..this will include unconventional attacks against the U.S. homelands…at that point the US will have the right and precedent to trigger article 5 ( just as they did for the war on terror after at terror attack on US soil).
3) just as the U.S. will likely end up triggering article five,china will be moving to get most of its allies or partners to attack US interests..this would include a number of nations that would see the U.S. engaged in a major pacific war as an opportunity..that would involve North Korea, Iran and likely Russia…
In reality it is unlikely that Russia will push NATO to war on its own..as the only advantage has is a Nuclear one and faces overwhelming power on a number of domains..but…Russia will likely nibble away at the none NATO countries if it wins in Ukraine…but if china goes to war with the U.S. all bets are off on what Putin would do in Europe as well as NATO being dragged into a pacific war.
“…the only role the executive and legislative have is to oversee the system at a very high level as a monitor and to gain assurance the whole system works.”
Something like this would be nice. The sclerosis in the current system exists in part because all elements of the MOD hierarchy look at important things separately and sequentially, each taking time. When that’s followed by MinDP, DefSec, Cabinet, again sequentially, it’s just more treacle. Not to mention necessary ticks in boxes from the treasury and cabinet office apparatchiks.
It’s something I have always found fascinating about conservative governments, they speak very much about small government and cutting back bureaucracy…and while they are very hot at reducing budgets for front line services they at the same time obsessed with increased bureaucracy by hugely seeking to control services and control how the money is spent..
The department for heath is a classic in the days of new Labour you had
1)Department of health ( national planning and funding had about 3000 staff
2)strategic health authority’s ( regional planning and funding, about six of these had a few hundred staff each)
3)Primary care trust ( system/county planning funding and purchasing contract holding, each county had one around 200 staff each)
4) Providers ( who hold a contract to provide care.
then you got the conservative reforms
1) department of health (national planning, and funding hit about 7000 with regulators around 12,000)
2) NHS England national teams ( national planning and funding..same as the department of health another few thousand )
3) NHS England regional teams ( replaced the strategic health authorities but also took over the contracting of primary care from the primary care trusts as they were disbanded.
4) Commissioning support units..provided the skills needed to plan system level care as the staff from the disbanded primary care trusts were moved to these, they contracted to CCGs and provided services around planning to the CCGs
5) CCGs these replaced the Primary care trusts..provinding contracting services for most local services..( but public health, health visiting , school nursing etc ended up with local councils and the NHS England regional teams took on contract management of primary care providers and specialised services) …these were very small footprint organisations and generally 2-5 of them replaced the primary care trusts.
6) providers.
basically the conservatives moved from a simple system of one organisation planning and contracting healthcare for a county created a multi headed hydra in which 3 different organisations planned and contracted out care to local providers..with a separate provider of support services like IT and business intelligence and at the strategic level moved from two tiers of organisations to three tiers…
basically the NHS has never recovered from this and the conservatives government has go more and more controlling…basically keeps central control of huge amounts of NHS budges handing them out in penny packets for whatever thing the minister thinks is in the press that month…we get sudden packets of money we have no plans of need for but have to find a way to spend…them we have to report weekly through all the layers about every penny we are sending…it’s totally tonto to be honest….the core NHS is actually really effective but once you get beyond contracted provider level it’s the state gone mad…..in comparison the Labour administrations were really very sane..handed over the Allocated amounts and let the county systems and providers get on with it.
There is no leadership inn in this country and tha is the reason for the nation being such a bloody mess
What does makes allies our strategic strength mean. Not sure US, Australia NZ and Japan is going to like Mr Healeys global retreat, so he means selective allies not all allies.
Then he ends on a nationalistic, we want it to be Britain’s plan to defend our country.
Dear god, you can tell a politician wrote this.
And of course Mr Healey completely fails to mention his party gave the Tories scope to not take defence seriously by ushering in JC, sorry John you have to take some responsibilty as opposition you weren’t credible on defence.
Lastly 2.5% is irrelevant, its how you spend the money. Whilst he may not have access the classified threats, there’s some very obvious ones and if he’s truely serious he would say we’ll cut the budget to suit the threats, not just come up with so headline GDP number.
Sorry John, still in the ‘no better than the Tories’ camp for me. And thats not a good place.
Labour is making hay over the governments defence cuts at a time when the UK’s national security faces the greatest threat for at least 50 years. However Starmer has notably refused to commit to defence spending above 2% GDP, pending the outcome of a defence review. Given that current spending is supposedly 2.2% (some creative accounting changes have been made in recent years to prevent it dropping below 2.0%), he has actually given himself wiggle room to make more cuts.