Starmer the Disarmer?

 

The Retreat from Strategy (London: Hurst) Published September 2024

“We live in a time when intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended”.

NOT Fyodor Dostoevsky

August 16^th. Oh dear, it seems Britain has been foisted with yet another government that said one thing to get elected and is doing very different things in power.  Pat McFadden, a key Labour figure even went as far as telling the British people Labour would always be honest.  Really, Pat? In a week that the war in Eastern Europe took a new and dangerous turn as Ukraine invaded Russia the new British Government leaked that the critical funding for defence science, technology, and research will be slashed by 20% and millions of defence critical pounds. 

I had hoped that Prime Minister Starmer would do the right thing by that ultimate public service, defence, by upholding the Tory commitment to spend at least 2.5% GDP by 2030.  At the NATO Washington Summit in June Starmer talked about "The generational threat of Russia… aided by the likes of North Korea and Iran. Conflicts rage across the Middle East and North Africa. The challenge of China. Terrorism."  His new Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey, went further, “It is right. Threats are growing across the world but here in Europe we have war for the first time for decades. We have a decade of growing aggression from Russia and defence and security must be and will be at the heart of this new government." Well, it is not.

The cuts are all part of the pretence that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves can close a £22 billion ‘black hole’ in public finances she claimed she was unaware of until she entered office.  Nonsense!  As shadow Chancellor Reeves had access to all the necessary financial data from the Office of Budget Responsibility. What makes this decision more concerning is that Starmer had said that he would increase defence expenditure to 2.5% ‘when economic conditions allow’.  Well, it was announced this week that the British economy grew by 0.6% in the last quarter faster than any other G7 country.  So, when exactly will ‘economic conditions allow’?  The answer? Probably never. Rather, Starmer is engaging in a form of appeasement, the worst kind of ‘stop the world I want to get off’ politics.  Democracies do not get to choose the threats they must confront.

By contrast, striking train drivers who already earn a minimum of £60,000 per annum and enjoy 1960s work practices to boot will receive a 15% increase to their already bloated pay packets for their ‘service’ and all paid for by the taxpayer.  According to Reeves these are ‘affordable’ pay increases for Labour’s friends and far, far more than any rank-and-file British soldier, sailor, or airman can ever dream of earning for their real public service. 

Defence modernisation IS defence.  It is also critical to the strategic messages the new British government MUST send to allies and adversaries alike.  Armed forces must be continually and above all consistently modernised otherwise they might as well be scrapped. Maintaining the peace in a dangerous world depends on credible deterrence and defence, which means convincing the likes of Putin, Xi and other autocrats that Britain’s armed forces are fit for the threat they pose, and that London is willing to pull its defence-strategic weight within the NATO alliance. It is also about convincing the Americans that Britain is a credible ally, and that NATO is worth the American effort. Cutting defence modernisation does precisely the opposite. Trump?

Several future critical defence programmes and all the high-skilled jobs involved are now under threat.  These include the Minerva military intelligence satellite programme, and the Tempest Future Combat Air System Britain is developing with Italy and Japan.  Cut those programmes and allies will draw the clear conclusion that Britain can no longer be trusted as a defence industrial partner.   It is also interesting that the public funding deficit Reeves seeks to close is about the same as the deficit in the MoD’s Equipment Plan which is believed to be also close to £20 billion. MoD spending is a mess and needs vital reform but the problem at source is the gap between the kit the Armed Forces need to do the job the government imposes on them and said government’s willingness to pay for it. The mess that is the MoD will not be resolved by cutting this vital budget or micro-managing projects as is proposed.

My only source of comfort in yet another unfolding British defence funding fiasco is that Lord Robertson is leading the Strategic Defence Review.  Robertson is someone I hold in the highest regard as he comes from the same Labour tradition as I do – solid, patriotic, aspirational and pragmatic.  He is also a former NATO Secretary-General, and I find it hard to believe he would lead yet another anything-but-strategic ‘how much threat can we afford’ review. He will have his work cut as Sir Keir Starmer’s priorities are now clear: NATO and defending Britain (or anyone else for that matter) are not among them.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it is the unspeakable in receipt of the indefensible encouraging the dangerously unpredictable at the expense of Britain’s now undefendable.  Starmer the disarmer?

Julian Lindley-French

Britain, Conscription, and a New National Guard

 “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

President Abraham Lincoln

A house divided

August 10^th. Britain is divided against itself. How can Britain afford both domestic security and national security at a time when both are under threat? Ever since the banking and monetary crisis of 2008-2010 British security and defence policy has simply not added up – literally. Successive British governments of all persuasions have also made huge errors of political and strategic judgement over the last thirty years one of which has been to rapidly increase the size of the population whilst cutting vital services. For example, since 2000 the officially acknowledged British population (it is probably significantly bigger) has grown from 58.9 million to 68 million people (Macronet) whilst services and other vital infrastructures have effectively been cut.  In 2010, the Cameron government even slashed the armed forces by 10% during the Afghanistan campaign. These failures of policy have helped turn a once stable society into a fractured one with potentially catastrophic social and political consequences. There is much to do to restore Britain, and it must be done quickly but here are two policy options that must now be explored: a new form of conscription and a British National Guard.

Whatever the strength of the British military instrument of power it is and will be effectively neutered if the home base is politically and socially insecure. Keeping the peace, be it at home or abroad, requires a continuum of effects from societal security to credible defence but both are being profoundly undermined by social unrest and the profound gap between official narrative and a dangerous lack of force and resource.  That is precisely why the likes of China, Russia and other autocratic states are applying hybrid war against the British to further exploit what they see as palpable weakness and instability.

At the high state-on-state end of the conflict spectrum keeping the peace will require Britain to deploy far more, more capable, and more capacious armed forces able to project power quickly allied to the capacity to move in some mass.  This is something General Lord Richards and I explore in great depth in our forthcoming September book “The Retreat from Strategy.”  The changing character of war will also demand of the British much greater fusion between emerging and disruptive technologies and military personnel. However, a new form of civil-military partnership will also be required allied to a new concept of civil defence to support communities from threats both within and without.  

The New Conscription

“There is a piece of shit at the end of this stick,” shouted the irate Sergeant brandishing his pacing stick in the face of an uncooperative soldier.  “Not this end, Sergeant,” came the reply. The word ‘conscription’ evokes a vision of unwilling citizens forced to ‘do their bit’ and ‘square bash’ (march) around draft parade grounds shouted at by an equally unimpressed regular sergeant. If there is one sure fire way to destroy the high-end operational effectiveness of a professional force it is to impose upon them people who do not want to be there and have little desire to cooperate. At the same time, cuts to the regular armed forces have clearly left Britain’s armed forces patently unable to meet the roles, missions, and tasks that Government demands of them. 

Future deterrence and defence will depend on a new form of civil-military cooperation which is precisely what the citizen armies of the past were.  It may still be needed in extremis but before that a new form conscription could come in the form of a partnership with the corporate sector.  Given the changing character of war the tech sector has a vital role to play in the form of apprenticeships are paid for jointly by both the state and companies.  Such a system would see young tech savvy civilians hone and develop their skills in support of national security and defence in partnership with the state.  Additional tax incentives for both companies and individuals could encourage such participation which will be vital in the coming age of the AI metaverse. Upon completion of service draftees would enter a new civil-defence technology reserve.

A British National Guard

The summer riots in England suggest that the traditional model of British policing is no longer sufficient to deal with a quite different society to the one for which it was created.  The police do have specialist counter-riot police and mutual support mechanisms, but they too have been subject to the cuts imposed by the Government ever since the banking and monetary crisis of 2008-2010. There are simply not enough of them and the majority are ill-equipped and ill-trained to deal with the spectrum of threats the modern ‘copper’ must confront.

The US National Guard is comprised of trained civilians under the Department of Defense who can be called upon both to support the civil authorities in times of emergency and deployed overseas in support of campaigns.  They also comprise an Active Guard and Reserve made up of former servicemen and women who retain their training and skills.  The irony is that the National Guard dates to December 1636 and was set up by the then English government in London as the Colonial Militia. Britain has long had a tradition of territorial reserves, as well as reserves and volunteer reserves which could be adjusted to form a new British National Guard. 

United we must stand

Striking a new security and defence balance will require London to do the one thing it is patently useless at – new thinking and putting the interests of ALL British people above and beyond the narrow obsession of bureaucratic politics between the Palace of Westminster at one end of Whitehall and Trafalgar Square at the other. It will also demand of a grossly irresponsible political class an end to the endemic policy short-termism (the COVID virus of politics) which has enshrined the politically convenient at the expense of the real job of government which is to face hard reality. Without fear nor favour?  There can be neither room for “we want the 1950s and we want it now” nostalgia which seems to be the motivation of at least some of the rioters, nor the naïve nonsense that there is no link between mass immigration and societal security.  Rather, British society is what it is, and it is that multicultural society that must be protected, secured, and defended. That means all its people irrespective of race, creed, or orientation! Period! To do that will require a new kind of partnership between a new kind of British state with a new kind of British society. It is called change.

However, when political and social cohesion collapses at home so does the capacity of a state to deter adversaries, defend its people, and realise its critical national interests.  Neither security nor defence can be credible if the home base is broken.  Projecting power and protecting people are one and the same. A house divided?  It is time for a re-think, London.  Are you (for once) up to it?  Are we (for once) up to it?

Julian Lindley-French