Few critiques of British mythmaking have been more astute than that of Correlli Barnett. He argued that 18th-century statesmen were hardheaded industrialists and merchants who understood the basis of military power. Then a new culture emerged, created by Victorian educationalists, one that had a ‘high-minded emphasis on religion and the classics’.
By the end of the 19th century, Britain’s elites no longer understood the nation’s military-industrial base. They had become little more than a complacent establishment, rather than men of action. Hampered by inefficiencies and ill-prepared for conflict, Britain emerged from the second world war shrunken, uncompetitive and condemned to further decline.
Unsurprisingly, Barnett’s diagnosis of the ‘British disease’ proved popular with Margaret Thatcher. But it is doubtful that our current prime minister knows of Barnett’s work. Keir Starmer is not a man overburdened by history. When asked how he felt walking past his predecessors’ portraits in No. 10, Starmer had nothing to say.
While Labour dithers, the world only becomes more dangerous, and the cost of inactivity rises
If the Prime Minister wants his brief and arid premiership to be remembered for anything, he needs to focus on the military-industrial base. The government’s response to the Strategic Defence Review – written by Lord Robertson, a former Nato Secretary-General, and released last June – has encapsulated a long-standing problem with British defence policy: a tendency to speak loudly and carry a small stick. We have, Lord Robertson argues, committed beyond our capabilities, undermined our usefulness as a partner and provoked the ire of our allies.
Robertson called for Britain to remain a leader within Nato and Europe. Yet the Defence Investment Plan, intended to fund that commitment, has repeatedly been held up. The Ministry of Defence is arguing that a £28 billion increase in funding is required over the next four years to meet current costs. Starmer intended to offer £18 billion, now pared back to £13.5 billion after the cabinet was unmoved by his pleas.
A terminally riven Labour party lacks the stomach for spending cuts to fund defence. Starmer has been unable to convince his MPs of the need for trade-offs, from scrapping the universal Winter Fuel Allowance to keeping the two-child benefit cap. While Labour dithers, the world only becomes more dangerous, and the cost of inactivity rises.
Neither the war in Ukraine nor Iran seems close to ending. As Owen Matthews writes, Ukraine’s conflict with Russia will soon have lasted longer than the first world war. Meanwhile, as Justin Marozzi writes, Donald Trump’s war on Iran has empowered the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and strengthened its stranglehold over the country’s kleptocratic economy.
Moscow and Tehran remain wedded to revanchist worldviews in which halting would be a defeat, no matter the cost of war. Britain must learn from both conflicts. Kyiv has led the world in developing drones capable of striking deep into enemy territory. They are also building autonomous ground vehicles able to fight the Russian invaders. The war in Ukraine is a lesson in the urgency of adapting to the changing nature of war. There is a different lesson from Iran: that we must learn of the importance of matching long-term strategy with the capabilities to achieve them.
In April, our political editor Tim Shipman revealed that ministers were failing to stockpile drones. While Ukraine is set to produce around seven million this year – an increase from just 3,000 in 2022 – Britain lacks both medium-range and deep-strike autonomous aircraft. Nick Carter, the former chief of the defence staff, recently argued in this magazine that Britain’s armed forces have become ‘hollow’, denuded of men and materiel. Instead of playing catch-up, we ‘should play to our strengths in innovation and advance industrial capacity to leapfrog ahead’.
This will require far more expenditure than the loose change Starmer has found behind the Treasury sofa, as well as a concerted effort to increase national resilience. Too often, defence has been downstream of regional policy, with military spending treated as investment for deprived areas rather than a source of national defence.
Take the Ajax armoured vehicle project. The government was keen to stress that the contract with General Dynamics would support 4,100 jobs, many of them in Merthyr Tydfil. A deal designed to focus on rebalancing regional inequalities, rather than military effectiveness, resulted in a vehicle which judders so violently that some soldiers have been injured and others have fallen ill. The Ajax was supposed to enter service in 2017. That date has been pushed back repeatedly, now to 2029. The National Audit Office found that the £5.5 billion project was vastly over budget and flawed from the outset.
Resilience requires more than ending MoD wastefulness, however. We need to build a nation that is prepared for hard choices. Half of all adults under 30 say they would never fight for this country. This is a generation which knows nothing but stagnation and decline. Beyond intelligent spending, we must build a Britain worth fighting for: one that is both prosperous and united.
We can already see the narrative of future historians such as Barnett: of unserious politicians overseeing an overburdened economy, unwilling to recognise looming disaster, and unable to pursue the national interest. Starmer must seize the moment and begin the process of rearmament if he is to have any legacy at all.
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