(THIS IS AN ABRIDGED VERSION OF THE SPEECH I GAVE IN OSLO ON AUGUST 24, 2026)
Headline: Britain has
two defence policies when it can only afford one. The conventional force
is essentially an
underfunded and fading
influence buyer in Washington, a vestige of past power. The nuclear force
is the ultimate insurance
in the event NATO collapses and Britain is forced to retreat
onto its nuclear armed island. Britain
funds neither force sufficiently and
thus both are sub-optimal.
No. Lunna House agreement or not. This is because British security and defence policy is a monumental bluff with
Britain’s armed forces critically lacking
the firepower, the mass of force and the ability to
manoeuvre it should have given Britain`s weight, place in NATO and what
fighting power Britain needs to lead and fight in the
twenty-first century. Why?
First, most of the so-called
defence reviews since 2010
have been amongst the greatest works of British
fiction with the British Establishment
retreating ever deeper into the political spin that is defence pretence. In 2010, the British
armed forces were cut by 10% at a stroke even though
they were engaged in a major
campaign in Afghanistan.
Second, HM Treasury economists still see affording the defence of Britain as discretionary expenditure even though Russia
invaded Ukraine and the
British are also spending billions supporting the Ukrainians.
The consequence is there for all to
see. The weakening of British defence
readiness is so bad that Britain today ranks 31st out
of 32 in progress towards Alliance
capability requirements and rearmament goals. That places Britain is just ahead of
Iceland which has no standing armed
forces.
More proof? I spoke
at the London Defence Conference in May, which was attended by your Chief of Defence. I started
by congratulating the Russian Navy
for successfully escorting a British military tanker
successfully through the channel because
that is all the Royal
Navy had available to escort
a Russian frigate.
Then, I demolished the then Secretary
of State for Defence John Healey, who
had just spoken, for claiming
Britain had a “warfighting
force on a war footing”. It does not
and is not.
I
then addressed Ukraine:
yes, Britain has taken
the lead but what to what end? What is the strategy other than
keeping Kyiv in the fight and waiting for the Americans to get
serious and come over the horizon? What about Britain’s own defences? Where is the defensive
effort needed to harden Britain´s critical infrastructure,
most notably its critical undersea
infrastructure other than warning the Russians, “we know what you´re doing?”
Then I focused on the greatest weakness
of British defence policy. Britain has
two defence policies when it can only afford one. The conventional force
is essentially an
underfunded and fading
influence buyer in Washington, a vestige of past power. The nuclear force
is the ultimate insurance
in the event NATO collapses and Britain is forced to retreat
onto its nuclear armed island.
Britain funds neither force sufficiently and thus both suffer from dangerous weaknesses. London tries
to hide this by regularly announcing absolute increases in investment rather
than investment relative to
what the force needs given the threat. London also routinely
lies. In August 2026, the
National Statistics Authority officially sanctioned
then Prime Minister Kier Starmer for misleading Parliament when he claimed he would increase defence expenditure by £270 billion over the course of this Parliament. The real figure is
£15 billion, with £272.2 billion the total spend over four years
The July Defence
Investment Plan
also claimed to have found an additional £15 billion for defence,
when in fact it found only £5 billion
of additional funding. The day Starmer
left office he also miraculously
announced a further £11 billion
of funding for foreign aid.
From where would that money
come?
The current Burnham government is also retreating from the commitment Britain will spend 3% GDP on defence by 2030, and
3.5% on core defence by 2035. Yet more
smoke and errors? Yes. Public debt has just this month passed the GDP 3 trillion mark and is now over 100%
GDP.
It took 100
years to go from GDP 1 trillion to GDP 2 trillion and
6 years to reach GDP 3 trillion. This year the cost of the welfare budget alone will be
GDP 330 billion
which is the same as the entire tax
take or about £1 billion a day!
With the US no
longer THE save haven for lenders and their public debt now over $40 trillion
we are heading towards an almighty bond market crash. US debt is driving up the
cost of borrowing for Britain which is soaring and such is
the power of the bond markets that servicing public debt interest is more
important than defending the country.
Debt interest payments are now £130 billion a year over twice the
defence budget for 2025-2026 of GDP
65.4 billion.
In other words, Britain cannot afford to defend itself let alone defend Norway
and fund an advanced expeditionary capability such as the Joint Expeditionary
Force vital to that role. Indeed, such is the
impact of public debt on European defence
I fear Europe’s indebted states will need
to re-structure debt with all the market consequences that will follow.
Even the 2.6% GDP
spent by Britain on defence is spent very badly and includes
items that have no place being there
(other NATO allies do the same) so that defence expenditure is really a form of
creative accounting designed by Special Advisors to hide the blushes of their
political masters. Britain only spends 1.5%
GDP on advanced
expeditionary conventional capabilities and capacity.
The rest goes on the Nuclear Enterprise. The under-funding of the ends,
ways and means of the British armed forces
has gone on for so long that the force is utterly hollowed
out. Worse, Britain has transferred so much of the little munitions it had to
Ukraine and despite
modest efforts to replenish them the arsenals are
depleted. It will also take time
for the British to rebuild their defence,
technological and industrial base, which is emaciated and focused on the US market rather
than the British.
The result? Britain’s armed forces are like Britain itself, a hollowed-out shell built on image, past glory and memory rather than
requisite fighting power. This is a tragedy
and not just for Britain. A
Britain properly and sensibly led would
restore its defence leadership at the core of NATO by changing
its spending priorities because only a credible NATO can afford Britain a
credible defence. It is doing the exact
opposite.
What does this mean for Norway (and NATO)? With the US stretched thin the world
over by China the future
defence of Europe, given the threats
Europeans are facing on the Northern and Eastern Flanks should ideally be built around two forces: the Bundeswehr and German land power and the Royal Navy and Britain’s maritime-amphibious power, with the Joint Expeditionary Force central
to that
mission.
Why? In the worst case the Chinese will engineer
simultaneous
crises in the
Arctic, North Atlantic, Europe, Middle East and the Pacific to force the Americans to make
hard choices. Britain (and Norway) will
then be called upon to lead the
defence of the Arctic and North Atlantic. And yet, Britain today is incapable
of leading the JEF
unless powers such as Norway act to offset British weaknesses, most notably force
sustainability.
This is because Britain’s
armed forces are particularly lacking at the high end of the conventional war spectrum and need at least £35 billion invested above and beyond current
plans to really put the British armed forces on the war footing
for the war they would need to fight.
Do
not believe me? Look at the state of the Royal Navy today
(the Army and the RAF are little different). At present
the ‘RN’ has only 6 destroyers and frigates that are operational,
some of which are the hull-expired Type 23 frigates.
There will not be the planned 13 such
ships available
until 2041 at the earliest, and most certainly
not the 17 ships that John Healey claimed the Royal Navy
had in May. The Royal Navy is deep in the mire of an availability and readiness crisis caused by chronic
underfunding and paper planning
over many years.
Of
the 5 of 7 in service Astute-class nuclear attack submarines all of them
are currently in dockyards. The 4 Vanguard-class nuclear
powered ballistic missile submarines are all now
beyond the operational design life of 25 years by between 2 and 8
years. The four Dreadnought class ‘boomers’ will not enter service until the early 2030s, Probably later.
Fleet readiness: of 6 advanced Type 45 destroyers, 2 are undergoing deep refit/power
improvement programme to correct a catastrophic design error 1 (HMS Duncan) is awaiting PIP, 2 are on sea trials
and 1 is sort of
operational
(HMS Dragon, The plan is to have all the 8 new Type 26 and 5 Type 31
frigates operational by 2035, with 3 new fleet support
ships by 2032.
Meanwhile, both Queen Elizabeth-class
carriers have had to undergo extensive repairs to
their propulsion
systems.
The Type 23 frigates are a metaphor
for the worse crisis in Britain’s armed forces in my lifetime and the worst crisis faced by the Royal Navy since
Samuel
Pepys
was Comptroller of the Navy in the
Seventeenth Century. The Lloyd's registry of naval ships
has since 2000 certified
Royal Navy ships as fit for
sea service. However, because an uncertified ship imposes
liability London and Lloyds has refused
to certify Type 23s the RN has been forced to scrap Type 23 with utterly worn-out
hulls far earlier than planned because
the cost of fixing them would
be prohibitive.
Worse, the Defence Investment Plan cut the next generation Type 83 destroyer and Type 32 frigates for fewer
and cheaper
platforms to be replaced by
unmanned vessels as part of the so-called Hybrid Navy, partly to offset the
chronic crewing problems the Royal Navy faces.
Yes, Norway, you will eventually get your 5 Type 26 frigates but I
cannot say when.
Ask the Australians who are increasingly concerned the UK will be unable to deliver
the planned SSN
Aukus
My
advice to is
this? Trust the British
to a point but have a Plan B – a Nordic Porcupine defence that would make you, the
Finns, Swedes and Danes a very prickly adversary for the Russians. The British people will always be willing
to defend its friends in Norway but the British Establishment is far less trustworthy. This is in part because they seem unable or unwilling to defend the British and in part because the epidemic of young and
ambitious Special Advisors with which ministers surround themselves prevents
the professional civil service form speaking truth to power.
Britain? Britain today is not simply a Potemkin Village, it is a Potemkin state with a Potemkin military full of Bonzai capabilities - a little bit
of everything
but not much of anything. A state that can neither
project the power contemporary defence demands
nor protect the people or the critical
infrastructures without which defence cannot start. Our enemies
know that.
Hanna Arendt once said that politicians do not just
lie, they remake reality. It is not just that politicians, and indeed bureaucrats remake reality, they also choose reality and today they choose the
appearance of economic and social security above national security
and the defence of the realm. They gambled on Globalisation and lost and now they want to hide the consequences of
this profound failure of policy from the people. Now, real reality
is back.
And it bites! Bites hard. Sadly, we British
have few
teeth and the British people must live with the added risk that such
failure imposes on them.
Julian Lindley-French
