THE DEFENESTRATION of Sir Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, the anointing of Andy Burnham as his successor in both positions, and the appointment of the new Cabinet over the past few days has been a bit of a whirlwind. Whether it has been a proper exercise in democracy I will leave to others to comment.
From a defence policy point of view, John Healey’s resignation from the post of Secretary of State for Defence over lack of proper funding for the armed forces (stymied by the then Chancellor Rachel Reeves and His Majesty’s Treasury), followed by his subsequent appointment by Burnham as replacement Chancellor has been quite amusing to say the least.
Now he has to provide the funding over which he resigned to West Streeting, the new Secretary of State for Defence. Musical chairs or pass the parcel? Take your pick.
Against that background, much of the discussion on defence policy recently has revolved around percentages of GDP that should be spent on defence. Currently the UK spends around 2.6% or thereabouts, depending whose statistics you believe, with a national target of 3% by 2030 (we think) and a NATO target of 3.5% by 2035.
Perhaps percentages of GDP are vaguely useful when illustrating a ballpark figure for non-expert politicians like Healey and Streeting, but they are hardly the best way to define and design a national defence policy. Sure, it allocates a broad budget figure, but it does not guarantee that those funds will be spent wisely.
If alternatively you were to go back to good old-fashioned first principles, taught at military staff colleges in the UK and elsewhere, then defence policy formulation is actually quite straight forward in its basic form.
There are three fundamental steps. The first is to define and examine the risks and threats to the UK’s interests at home and abroad. These can include all sorts of things; threats to sub-sea cables carrying electricity and internet connections to and from Europe and across the Atlantic, threats to the Falklands, Cyprus, and Gibraltar, potential disruption of trading routes, interference with sovereign air space, the threats of illegal immigration, terrorism, and so on. The list is a long one.
The second stage is to allocate what we in the military used to call “troops to task”, in other words what military assets does the UK need to provide to defend against such risks and threats. For example, protection of sub-surface cables might require, say, a couple of submarines and a number of surface vessels, or the protection of Cyprus might need four Typhoon jets and a number of ground based air defence systems. And so on and so forth.
So you then tot up all of these requirements and then ask the third question – can we afford it? The answer to this is almost invariably ‘no’, so we then enter an iteration process where the risks and threats are prioritised, military assets are double and triple-hatted, and budgets reviewed until we reach what is deemed to be an acceptable solution. And this should define the defence budget; needs-driven, not Treasury-led.
This is the proper way to do it, as any trained military officer from any of the three armed services will know. But to the politicians making the decisions – Burnham, Healey, and Streeting – it will be an alien process. It is therefore up to senior military figures, the Chief of Defence Staff and the heads of the three services, to advise them accordingly. Are they doing so? I have my doubts.
One final related point. Politicians, when announcing new defence spending plans, often focus on the number of civilian jobs these new initiatives will create or support. Only a complete ignoramus would predicate defence policy on the number of jobs it might provide. Just look at the sorry tale of the Ajax armoured cavalry vehicle programme, and weep.
The main point here is that GDP percentage figures may be vaguely useful in designation a ballpark figure in which defence budgets might fall, but they should not be the driving force behind proper defence planning. And designing defence policy by the number of civilian jobs provided is just nonsense.
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