THE government’s recent decision to slash the foreign aid (and other) budgets to fund rearmament is paying for champagne for BAe Systems shareholders. (The share price is up 25 per cent since January 1.) It has spread doom and gloom in international development, alarm in the Treasury and, more importantly, concern in the bond markets, where ten-year gilt yields (the price of the UK’s massive debts) have been rising inexorably since 2020 and hit 4.7 per cent last week.
It’s not quite bonanza time yet in the MoD. While I’m sure every general, admiral and air marshal is dusting off their pet projects, the more politically aware of them will realise that such government largesse will come at a price. That’s doubly so in a shrinking economy where most other departments face cuts, the Treasury seem to have lost what little influence they had on the economy and Labour backbenchers are getting feisty as they realise that the Reeves Budget is a busted flush.
So is the defence of the Realm, though successive senior officers and secretaries of state have connived at pretending otherwise. I have written at length on the challenges facing the Armed Forces as a whole: the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force. The short version is that the single biggest problem they face is the loss of a net 3 per cent of their trained strength every year.
They are now recruiting more or less enough people to enter training but the full-time trained strength is falling by 3 per cent a year and has been since covid. That brain drain represents a loss of institutional expertise that is irreplaceable in the short term. In terms of combat power – the armed forces’ primary deliverable – the quality and the quantity of our armed forces are both in decline and have been for years. This has an adverse impact on morale and therefore more people leave. The primary reason cited is impact on family life, a major part of which is the shockingly poor state of service housing.
The first thing the Service Chiefs should do, therefore, is to sort out the housing problems. It is extraordinary that an organisation for which the welfare of soldiers is sacrosanct can allow such utterly poor building maintenance. (If the MoD can’t maintain a house it’s no surprise that propellers fall off aircraft carriers.) Fixing housing is quick, simple and relatively cheap. Bizarre as it may seem, refurbishing military housing estates in Catterick, Devonport and elsewhere today deters an attack on Riga tomorrow through reducing the unsustainable outflow of trained personnel. Or rather it would if the servicemen also had the weaponry, training, logistics and leadership.
The armed forces have not descended into their current pitiful state solely due to funding. They have failed to deliver a clear statement of what their role is or should be. While it’s inevitable that government parsimony will result in much management and leadership time being consumed by ‘make do and mend’ the armed forces either lack long term strategy or, in the case of the Army, have a new one every other year.
This is not solely a failure of military senior officers; it’s also a failure of political direction. Of course no politician likes to discover that their portfolio is a mess. Too many then prefer to obfuscate (and military jargon is superb for this) and kick the can down the road. One might argue that as it is the job of the Chief of the Defence Staff to hold the Secretary of State’s feet to the fire of military reality this is yet another military leadership failure. True in a purist world; in the real one CDS is a political appointment and senior officers don’t get promoted for fighting the system.
One must therefore question whether the system and people that mismanaged the armed forces into this mess are able to reverse the decline – quickly? The Whitehall precedents are not good. For the past 50 years the NHS has had its budget increased in real terms every year at an average rate of about 8 per cent. Yet, as Wes Streeting knows only too well, it is failing.
Throwing money at problem departments often exacerbates them, particularly if there is endemic inefficiency and lack of productivity. The MoD lives from black hole to black hole – the current one is around £17billion. Unless there is some very stringent analysis of the structural failings of an organisation where only one in 20 programmes is likely to be delivered on time and budget, Reeves, Starmer and Healey will just be throwing good money after bad.
The government initiated the Robertson Defence Review shortly after coming into power nine months ago. One would expect that within that there is some definition of what the armed forces are expected to do, which in turn should lead to organisations, equipment requirements and costs. However if it does not have a forensic analysis of how defence got so bad it’s just another defence review that, like its many predecessors, won’t solve the core long-term problems of the MoD (and many other government departments).
The Robertson review is predicated on UK being a part of Nato; thanks to the efforts of Trump, Macron and Starmer that’s questionable: Nato might not survive Ukraine. The Robertson Review was due to be published in ‘the first half of 2025’. That might be slipping as the draft has not yet been sent to reviewers (due in ‘the spring’). It’s also got to cope with the increase in defence spending which might require a significant rewrite of at least some parts. Whether it is wise for Starmer to throw £5billion or so at the MoD without having first read the review he commissioned is a topic for another day. (Spoiler – it’s madness).
Aside from housing, there are no quick fixes in the MoD. Whichever boots Starmer decides to commit to the ‘coalition of the willing’ he and Macron seek to build will lack key capabilities. Fortunately for them and, more particularly for poor Tommy Atkins, it’s not immediately obvious that President Trump’s drive for peace will deliver particularly quickly. Russia is winning, so is in no hurry for a ceasefire. Zelensky is losing, but can’t accept the reality that the Russian advance will continue inexorably.
President Putin has vetoed Nato troops in Ukraine. That fundamental fact seems not to have percolated through to the Starmer PR team or the MoD. Less surprisingly it hasn’t entered the thought process of the Labour backbench Starmtroopers, such as they are. If the coalition of the willing is unacceptable to President Putin, Starmer’s rearmament could actually prolong the fighting. What is his aim in this vainglorious idiocy? Macron is an egoist for sure. It seems our Prime Minister, a wealthy lawyer who needs gifts of designer gear, is too.
While there is a desperate need for funding defence properly, this sudden rush to deliver a capable force to give credence to the pointless coalition of the allegedly willing is unlikely to deliver the reforms required. Starmer and Reeves will simply waste more money that they do not have, increase the tax burden and damage the economy. Slogans and soundbites are not policies, and building military capability is far from instantaneous.
The United Kingdom needs better leadership than this. The Realm needs defending.
