Britain can’t afford Starmer’s weakness

Even the Prime Minister cannot claim to be ignorant of the sorry state of our Armed Forces Daily Telegraph 18/04/26 Even before No 10 was thrown into chaos by the latest developments in the Mandelson saga, Sir Keir Starmer was unable to make up his mind on one of the most important dilemmas of the age.

His spokesman was asked last week for the Government’s view on whether welfare should be cut to increase spending on defence. “It’s not a zero-sum game when it comes to defence and welfare and you have [the Prime Minister’s] words on that,” he said. With respect to the Prime Minister, when the economy is barely growing, defence versus welfare clearly does amount to a zero-sum game. Perhaps Sir Keir needs to be reminded of some basic facts. There is not an unlimited supply of tax revenue to pay for everything the country wants or needs. The Treasury is heavily constrained in how much it can borrow, in part because it has already taken on so much debt and the UK is already spending beyond its means. In such a situation, ministers do need to make difficult (and sometimes politically painful) choices on what to prioritise. And given the sheer size of the welfare budget, it would surely be impossible to find significant new money for the military without cutting benefits. The argument for prioritising defence now is also overwhelming. The Iran war has again exposed Britain’s Armed Forces as not fit for purpose, having suffered years of underfunding during the years of the illusory “peace dividend”. It was shocking enough to see British bases in Cyprus come under attack from drones, while one of the Royal Navy’s few available ships was still weeks away from being deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. It was outright humiliating when Vladimir Putin sent a warship to escort shadow-fleet tankers through the English Channel, in defiance of Britain’s claim that it would seize such vessels. Our own ship could only hold back and watch. One new funding option that figures within the Government are believed to be examining in order to plug the military gap are so-called defence bonds. It is an idea with a worthy pedigree. British governments raised money during the First and Second World Wars via such instruments, and the UK only paid off the last of its First World War borrowing in 2015. If money can be borrowed at lower rates over a very long time horizon, and if it can be guaranteed to be spent on the military, then perhaps it may be an idea worth considering. Germany has loosened its strict debt rules, for example, precisely so that it can rebuild its own threadbare armed forces. Those are big ifs, however, and Britain does not otherwise have the luxury of relatively low overall debt levels. Defence bonds, in the absence of major spending cuts elsewhere in government, risk becoming just the latest way in which politicians seek to avoid making choices on what to prioritise. Knowing the British political class, the proceeds could even end up being diverted into other areas. Many on the Left argue fatuously that foreign aid is a form of defence spending, for example, on the specious grounds that it reduces the chance of conflict. Unfortunately, Sir Keir appears to be in no position to make any decisions at all, let alone hard ones, overwhelmed as he is by the scandal over Lord Mandelson’s failed security vetting. By his own admission, he is not fully in control of the Government he purports to lead. Next week in Parliament, he is expected to try to escape the claim that he misled the House of Commons by falling back on his own supposed ignorance of what the Civil Service was up to. But even the Prime Minister cannot claim to be ignorant of the sorry state of Britain’s Armed Forces. Nor is this one of those issues in which the country can afford its leader to have no real opinion. There is no technical tweak, or public consultation, or meeting with “stakeholders” that can answer the fundamental question of what sacrifices Britain should be making in order to ensure the country’s continued security. It hardly needs saying that these are dangerous times, and our enemies have evidently scented weakness. If Sir Keir won’t do what is necessary to defend the nation, then we need a prime minister who will.