Behind the row about money, Starmer has neglected to make the basic case for protection against “possible war by 2030”

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  Just one for Andy to  fix?

The  shock resignation of  the ever loyal, ever dependable John Healey and his armed forces minister Al Carns may have settled Keir Starmer’s fate. Healey  left the strong impression that the financial  settlement he was offered for  implementing a radical Strategic Investment Review  was  the crucial final deal. But not so, it was just a timely and important stage on the way to what many fear. -the Treasury included  –   is another Defence bottomless pit .

Healey damned Starmer for being too weak to practice what he preached

… you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.

You know what defence needs. You made the argument for this powerfully in your speech at the Munich Security Conference back in February. Without a DIP that meets the moment in this way, I am being forced to make decisions that would reduce the readiness of our Forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations, and could make the country less safe.

But the fundamentals of strategic assumptions are barely questioned. They should be. As Healey wrote in his resignation letter to Starmer.

it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.”

This case is taken for granted in  the Defence Review. It should be challenged. Is it credible that Russia under Putin or a similarly minded successor, having lost  up to half a million men in the war against Ukraine for a few slivers of territory  would  think it just the thing to invade a slice of Nato, the Baltic states or Finland or Poland? Even he made some gains at Ukraine’s  expense in any peace deal?

These countries on Nato’s eastern flank  suffered wars and invasion from Russia for centuries right up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. They are now arming to the teeth to prevent any recurrence, bolstered by the celebrated Article 5  of the NATO charter pledging all members to defend each other. Trump’s refusal to finance Ukraine’s defence of Russian invasion put the wind up the whole alliance which has now agreed to take over funding US weaponry for Ukraine. You don’t have to believe that Nato’s absorption of the Warsaw Pact was to blame for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,  to prevent Ukraine from joining the opposing club . But Ukraine joining Nato would have been a provocation too far and won’t happen.

So how great really is the threat from Russia?  Continual  hostile acts , cutting undersea comms  cables, aggressive buzzing of Nato planes in international territory,  even just  across Nato borders,  multiple cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns,  novichock poisoning, mysterious assassinations in western countries. No question, a hostile posture. On top of which nuclear arms limitation treaties  have been allowed to lapse. But not  exactly Stalingrad or the battle of Kursk in a war of survival which left over 20 million dead.

Up to half a million Russian  dead in  Ukraine is still a fearsome toll  Ukrainians fewer  but perhaps not by much. Toll figures ranging widely  are part of the propaganda war . But the fact remains that the case for an attack on Nato has not been made out.   Claiming threats is what defence experts do. They project a monstrous hypothesis into reality and invoke the theory of  deterrence that prevailed during the Cold War over nuclear weapons. What would we do it Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons to counter Nato members  financing Ukraine and tightening   sanctions against him? Tool up in kindis the answer. It would be too cynical to assert they use their rareified expertise to put the frighteners on politicians and people  to screw more money out of the system. These people are sincere along the intellectual tramlines of the  discipline called Defence.

Nuclear fears are perhaps surprisingly not at the heart of Nato’s posture and what the UK Defence Review is mainly about.. They’re still spooked by the years of appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s when rearmament began only just in time to build just enough fighter planes for the Battle of Britain. This was coupled with a secret admission from the defence chiefs that overstretched Britain could not defend its Empire  across two oceans, Yet heavy traces of post imperial delusions persist.

As the FT writes:.

For decades, Britain has sought to maintain the military of a great power on the budget of a medium-sized one. The departure of Healey, and the subsequent resignations of armed forces minister Al Carns and two ministerial aides at the Ministry of Defence, have exposed the inevitable tension. At the heart of the debate is not just how much the UK should spend on the military, but what types of threat it faces — and ultimately, its place in the world.

The numbers are daunting: Britain’s defence budget stood at about £60bn last year. The strategic defence review (SDR), published in 2025 and intended to define military priorities for the coming ten years, laid out a shopping list that officials estimate could require roughly £68bn extra over the next decade or so…

All told, estimates from inside the MoD have suggested a gap of about £28bn between the ambitions of the SDR and current planned spending. Many experts believe the shortfall is significantly larger. But the forthcoming Defence Investment Plan, promised before the next Nato summit in Ankara on July 7, so far is understood to propose only £13.5bn in additional funds, meaning huge cuts would have to be found elsewhere in the defence budget. That has spurred the ministerial resignations..

Meanwhile, the experience in Ukraine has challenged old assumptions about warfare. Cheap drones, electronic warfare and long-range precision strikes have inflicted devastating losses on traditional armoured units. Nato’s way of fighting, some have suggested, may be obsolete.

 Ben Judah, former spad to David Lammy as foreign secretary offers a  even sharper  critique.  

Really what we’ve seen with the Defence Investment Plan is a failure to make a choice. This is why. The UK is committed to four major defence projects: • Renewing our nuclear force • Meeting our NATO commitments • The AUKUS submarine project with 🇺🇸🇦🇺 • The new GCAP fighter jet with 🇯🇵🇮🇹 You cannot afford that at current spend. You either need to drop one or move up to 2.5% GDP rapidly to keep up. It you don’t want to drop one — with all the diplomatic pain and security exposure that comes with it — you have to decide how to fund it and there are only two options: • Borrowing hitting future taxpayers • New taxes hitting current taxpayers But 2.5% of GDP is not even the sum necessary for war readiness rearmament — all those drone, AI, equipment and manpower upgrades — which is at a minimum 3% and probably closer to 3.5%. What went wrong is the Strategic Defence Review said yes to all four projects, the government then adopted the rhetoric and diplomatic posture of war readiness rearmament but failed to make a decision on how to pay for all this — costing us merely one Defence Secretary, one Armed Forces Minister and the government’s credibility when it comes to defence. And that’s before a serious attempt has even been made to build a totally new procurement and delivery process to confront the fact the MoD is the Ministry of Armed HS2s, highly unlikely to deliver rearmament without insane overspend.

“Ministry of HS2” ouch! Or this from the Centre for British Progress.

MI6 ‘s view is more nuanced. The new MI6  chief  and first woman in the post, the  suitably exotically named  Blaise  Metreweli noted: “The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in this Russian approach to international engagement.. The defining challenge of the 21st century”  (is) “not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom. Power itself is becoming more diffuse, more unpredictable as control over these technologies is shifting from states to corporations, and sometimes to individuals,” 

What does Burnham think? Fairly cloudy it appears  but with a hint of a trade off – in the long term – according to a Times Interview

Does he agree with Healey that the £13.5 billion pledged by the prime minister is not enough?

“The world has changed, it’s obvious to anybody who looks at it, and we are going to have to change the assumptions on which we’ve been working,” he says. “I would say it’s defence and security but also resilience.”

It is at this point that Burnham begins to set out one of the first planks of his plans for power. He thinks that there needs to be not just a ten-year approach to defence and security, but a ten-year approach to public investment and procurement. As part of the plan, all public procurement would have to include a measurable commitment to “social value”, such as work placements and apprenticeships for young people.

“Social value” sounds even more expensive. Economic value . i.e. real high tech defence jobs after making hard headed strategic choices, is a better bet.   The UK ‘s defence indusiry laid  on a showcase of their wares in the former Honda factory in Swindon –  in what  is to become the largest drones factory in Europe. It weas to be the occasion for Starmer and Healey together  to announce the Defence Investment Plan. It was more than a PR disaster. What will happen next is up in the clouds.

 

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