When John Healey was asked, onstage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were \u201cready\u201d for war, the Defence Secretary replied: \u201cYes.\u201d One of those present says: \u201cThat was greeted with near incredulity in the room.\u201d Another attendee compared Healey\u2019s plight to someone \u201cplaying French cricket,\u201d with critics from all sides hurling balls at his ankles while he tried to bat them away. \u201cYou can\u2019t score any runs in French cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
George Robertson, Healey\u2019s most respected Labour predecessor and a former secretary general of NATO, was not present; he was in Scotland celebrating his 80th birthday. But he returned to give a withering interview to the FT and a speech. Having co-written the government\u2019s strategic defense review, he warned that, because of the government\u2019s \u201ccorrosive complacency\u201d over defense spending, Britain was \u201cnot safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018We could have drone swarms attacking us off Russia\u2019s shadow fleet in the Channel within 18 months\u2019<\/p>\n
While Keir Starmer is congratulated by his MPs for opposing Donald Trump\u2019s war on Iran, defense chiefs, various ministers and leading figures in the defense industries think the government is failing at a moment of existential crisis for national security. The Defence Investment Plan (DIP), due last autumn, is still in flux; insiders say that Starmer has \u201cgiven the DIP to the Treasury,\u201d which one called \u201can act of national suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multiple sources say Downing Street is gearing up to find more money for defense after May\u2019s local elections, but as a former Starmer aide put it: \u201cNo one seems to have told George [Robertson], which is stupid.\u201d Two insiders say officials have \u201cpenciled in\u201d June 28 to publish the DIP, but one added: \u201cPeople writing the submissions say it\u2019s still a mess with no direction.\u201d That timing makes sense, since it is just before the NATO summit in Ankara. Others point out that the G7 summit in Evian begins on June 15, when Starmer is likely to get a fresh pounding from Trump.<\/p>\n
A senior defense source who spent the week in the US said: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of frustration at what they see as a pretty sanctimonious attitude over the Gulf. Even people who think Trump has made a horrendous mistake believe friends should stand with you when you screw up, not dump on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonia Romeo, the new Cabinet Secretary, has been advised by former civil servants to take charge of the issue, as Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, is a \u201croving troubleshooter,\u201d not a numbers man. But a Whitehall insider says: \u201cAntonia came in thinking she was going to sort it out and get the Treasury to make savings to fund defense. That died within a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
This funding crisis has been long in the making. \u201cWe were shit as well,\u201d a former Tory minister admits. But Chancellor Rachel Reeves is offering just \u00a310 billion over four years to plug a \u00a328 billion shortfall and defense chiefs have been told to make cuts of \u00a33.5 billion this year. One source claims: \u201cI\u2019ve heard it from several people that Reeves said: \u2018Why should we give money to a department that\u2019s so far away from gender parity?\u2019\u201d Naturally, this is denied. The Chancellor dislikes \u201cmansplaining\u201d but as one defense source put it: \u201cIn this case, the mansplainers are right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long-term cost of Treasury penny-pinching could be high. Gulf allies, disappointed by Britain\u2019s sluggish response to the Iran war, are \u201cless likely to use their sovereign wealth funds to invest in the UK,\u201d says a source. If America moves away from NATO, as Trump has again threatened, every country in Europe will need to spend 5 percent of GDP a year for a decade to develop the capability to deter Russian aggression, a near doubling of the current defense budget.<\/p>\n
A source says that when Healey first got the job, he told the MoD strategy team to stick to Labour\u2019s manifesto commitment to spend 2.5 percent of GDP on defense, rather than lobby the Treasury for more.<\/p>\n
Despite warnings by Angus Lapsley, the UK\u2019s man at NATO, that \u201cother nations were folding,\u201d it came as a surprise to ministers last year that other countries were ready to spend the 3.5 percent demanded by Trump. A senior figure recalls: \u201cThe UK tactic was \u2018This will never happen.\u2019 The government expected to hide behind Italy, Canada, Belgium and Spain. But the only one hanging behind was Spain. It was delusional.\u201d Another source claims: \u201cThe defense review was going to be called NATO First, until they realized that would be too expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The effects of the underspending are evident. At the start of the Iran crisis, a former cabinet minister says, \u201cThe navy was told it could have one active capability \u2013 either protecting the cables around UK waters or being in the Gulf. It couldn\u2019t do both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowhere is the lack of cash and direction clearer than in the purchase of drones. On April 13, Volodymyr Zelensky said that robots and drones alone had captured and held a Russian position for the first time. Yet despite Britain having supplied 85,000 drones to Kyiv, insiders say we have \u201chardly any\u201d of our own. Meanwhile, the plan to supply an attack drone to Estonia has not been delivered on. Last April, the MoD admitted the only purchase order for unmanned aerial vehicles since the general election had been for just three surveillance drones. \u201cThe British Army has no medium-range strike drone and no deep-strike one-way attack drone at meaningful scale,\u201d a source says. The Octopus interceptor drone, promised \u201cwithin weeks\u201d last October, has no confirmed status. \u201cWe have no drones, no energy and no stockpiles,\u201d a Labour advisor admits.<\/p>\n
The MoD argues there is no point stockpiling drones, since the technology changes so fast. But critics say the military is not ready for a modern war. \u201cOur armed forces are not training properly in uncrewed warfare,\u201d an MP observes. Estonia is canceling a combat vehicle contract so as to invest in drones. Poland has ordered 10,000. An expert warns: \u201cWe could have drone swarms attacking us off Russia\u2019s shadow fleet in the Channel, or a hypersonic missile attack, within 18 months.\u201d \u201cThe problem is fundamental,\u201d the former cabinet minister says. \u201cStarmer can\u2019t make a fucking decision\u201d and is putting \u201cparty before country.\u201d A Labour right-winger, mocking the PM\u2019s abandonment of his Chagos Islands deal and his \u201cLove Actually moment\u201d with Trump, says: \u201cSurely the new Starmer strategy demands that he gives Diego Garcia away at a press conference with Hugh Grant.\u201d<\/p>\n
An unlikely savior waits in the wings. Defense sources say Angela Rayner, who is still eyeing the leadership, is privately vowing to act if she ousts Starmer. \u201cShe\u2019s saying, \u2018I\u2019m the one that\u2019s going to get to 3.5 percent, get the jobs and do defense re-industrialization,\u2019\u201d a well-placed source reveals. \u201cShe\u2019s inexperienced, but she\u2019s a better politician than Starmer. She can join the dots.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, a Labour advisor predicts that \u201cthere will be more money, but probably not enough. And it will have to be squeezed out, as opposed to the UK leading.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When John Healey was asked, onstage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were \u201cready\u201d for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,4960,2016],"class_list":{"0":"post-15333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-john-healey","10":"tag-nato"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116417577818854370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}