Could Labour afford to underfund UK’s hollowed-out defence?

Good morning. Labour’s candidate in Rochdale, which has a by-election on February 29, was disavowed by the party yesterday. If you know Azhar Ali it is probably because the Labour party spent a lot of time yesterday also insisting it was standing by him. All in all, a bit of a disaster.

Ali had been recorded saying Israel “deliberately took the security off [around Gaza on October 7], they allowed . . . that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want”. But the recording of him repeating this conspiracy, for which he has apologised, emerged only after the deadline for replacing him on the ballot had passed.

We were never going to learn a lot about UK politics from the by-election results. We are now going to learn even less.

Don’t forget defence

You may recall, shortly before Christmas that Keir Starmer pitched up to visit the UK troops deployed to Tapa, in Estonia — a jolly that resulted in a fairly good photo op. There was significant low politics to the trip: he managed to avoid “pulling a Dukakis” (translation: looking like a dweeb). But there was bigger meaning to the visit, too.

The UK presence in Estonia — the “enhanced forward presence” — matters: it is a cornerstone of the defence of perhaps the most exposed Nato member, Estonia. It is also the UK’s most important such defence commitment. So Labour, which is likely to take office within 12 months, should absorb, with interest, the views of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service.

Its annual report for 2024, out this morning, has been written up by colleagues here. But I want to pick one note from the report on Russia’s current trajectory of rearming and rebuilding (my emphasis in bold):

This army is likely to be technologically inferior to Nato allies’ defence forces in most areas, except for electronic warfare and long-range strike capabilities. However, its military potential would be significant, owing to its size, firepower (including artillery and numerous inexpensive combat drones), combat experience and reserves. Defending against a possible conventional attack from such an army would require allied defence forces and defence industries to be significantly more prepared, capable and better stocked with ammunition and material than they currently are.

Since February 2022, we have learned that a lot of Moscow’s military capability is lousier than we supposed. But we also must reassess our view of their willingness to absorb losses, draw in fresh recruits, re-equip, divert resources from living standards to the war, convert industrial capacity to military uses and try again.  

This follows, too, the views last week of Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defence minister, who warned that Russia was now more likely to strike at Nato directly:

It cannot be ruled out that within a three- to five-year period, Russia will test Article 5 and Nato’s solidarity. That was not Nato’s assessment in 2023. This is new information that is coming to the fore now.

Norway’s contribution to this genre this week is less bleak, but still glum:

The prospect of any genuine dialogue [between the western allies and Moscow] seems distant, and Russia’s policies towards the west and Norway are expected to become more unpredictable in the years to come.

Starmer will need to think about all this — because taking office means inheriting a mess. We are particularly ill-equipped for this moment.

The UK has asset-sweated its military. It spends more than its big European peers, but not well — and not enough to match what it wants. Yes, we have aircraft carriers, nukes, pipe bands and the Red Arrows. But Ben Wallace, the previous defence secretary, cut the army’s headcount to 72,500. And, as with all the public services, the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force cannot even recruit the staff they need at current pay levels.

Everywhere you look there are serious problems — with the army in particular trouble. The UK is upgrading its main battle tank — but only aims to have 148 of the new Challenger 3s. A recent parliamentary report speculated about whether the UK could even deploy a heavy division. Anyone who has been following the war in Ukraine would be horrified by the document’s view of the UK’s air defence and artillery.

Meanwhile, the usual backstop to the defence of Europe is looking shaky. Let me note the words of Donald Trump, the former and potential future president of the US, who seemed in the past week to encourage an attack on fellow members of Nato that had failed to meet the requirement of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence: 

I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent? . . . No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay’.

Free-riding on the US’s vast arsenal and capability is not a reliable strategy. For one thing, we already know that Europe is, almost certainly, going to need to give more kit to Ukraine than we had expected just a few months ago.

I should be clear, it is not just about money. As the Economist’s Shashank Joshi put it recently, it is also about:

Endemic skills shortages across all branches of the services; a culture of applying short-term fixes; a broken procurement system that too often results in poor value for money.

But, let’s get real: right now it’s mostly going to be about money. Wallace wanted defence spending to edge up to 3 per cent of GDP — not a small rise, but an eminently affordable one. That would cover a lot of ground, if sustained.

If Labour wins the coming election it will have a compelling story to tell if the party opts for that sort of rise — not least since some Tories would probably break ranks to support them. Grant Shapps, the current defence secretary, has said we are in a “prewar” world. It is hard to pivot from there to sniping about a bigger defence budget.

Furthermore, the party enjoys showing off its patriotism. Parts of the Labour movement also like banging on about being the party of Nato and the original nuclear deterrent (these parts of Labour, it so happens, are currently in charge). Defence spending also creates a lot of good on-shored high-tech jobs.

But as my colleagues noted this week, Labour is imposing a fiscal straitjacket on itself — promising not to touch some big revenue-raising levers. Labour’s U-turn on green investment last week was driven by its hawkishness.

It has some room for manoeuvre — more than the leadership lets on. But Labour would inherit a lousy fiscal position, combined with 14 years of skin-and-bones public services that need a lot of patching up. There will be demand for cash from all over the place.

Just take the NHS: in January 2011, 17 people were forced to wait more than 12 hours in a hospital emergency department for admission or discharge in England. This January, it was 54,000.

This, in truth, is the real challenge for defence. The armed forces are deeply eroded; it is under-appreciated in Westminster how hollowed out they now are and why that might be a growing risk. But a new Labour government will find there are expensive problems everywhere.

Now try this

I really enjoyed James O’Malley’s write-up of the deployment of AI in . . . making an underground station run better. A surprisingly heartening account about tech making things better/our descent into a tech dystopia. Your pick.

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