Defence – what it means and how much it must cost – once again leads the political agenda. Boom or bust, bombs or radioactive dust, the one rule of British politics is that the services’ top brass will always demand more money – and then waste a huge chunk of it.

With military precision, musty generals and mothballed admirals regularly roll onto the pages of the broadsheets to throw their toys over the fact that there are more expensive toys available and they want them now!

And when they get them, which they very often do? That’s a tidy little sum for the international weapons corporations that swarm the UK. All at the taxpayers’ expense.

In June, a huge row took place over defence spending. Then-prime minister Keir Starmer had offered the military an extra £13bn over four years to fund the purchase of new warfare tech. Military figures – as well as then-defence secretary John Healey – had expected something more in the region of £18bn. Others in the services had put the needed figure at more like £28bn.

The issue became politically fatal for Starmer, with his otherwise loyal defence secretary Healey dramatically resigning over the shortfall in promised funds. MPs who’d been backing the prime minister against a leadership challenge from Andy Burnham ahead of the Makerfield byelection abandoned him in droves, leaving Starmer no choice but to quiet-quit until Burnham’s coronation last week.

Defence spending is now back in view, with an announcement expected later this week. Over the weekend, new defence secretary Wes Streeting was asked by Times Radio whether meeting the UK’s spending defence commitments (which includes one to Nato, taking us from spending 2.5% to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 – a breathtaking extra £25bn a year according to the Resolution Foundation) was a resignation issue for him as well. “It is,” he said, “It is absolutely, for me, a matter of principle.”

Ruh-roh. That neat soundbite may prove costly for Streeting, with an ally quickly clarifying: “Wes was not threatening to quit. He simply said that properly funding our national defence is a matter of principle.” Don’t worry Wes – we rarely take you literally.

The ministerial deckchairs were, of course, neatly rearranged last week, and Healey is our new chancellor. Some have read that promotion as a signal to the military that their demands will be met. But it also creates the possibility of irresistible political drama. After all, Healey’s resignation letter accused former chancellor Rachel Reeves of being “unwilling” to cough up what the military demanded. That’s an accusation that could soon come back to haunt him.

As defence secretary, Healey had urged the government to boost defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 – a demand repeated in his quit-lit. In his first interview since taking on the country’s coffers, Healey rolled back from this. Asked by the Sun whether that was still the goal, he said it was too early to talk about time scales.

Meanwhile, new prime minister Andy Burnham sat down with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg for his first interview since entering Downing Street. Amongst vital topics like social care and the growing number of young people out of education and employment, defence was there too. Like his chancellor, Burnham was cagey about the timeline, only promising to meet the 2035 Nato promise. He didn’t push back, though, when Kuenssberg linked extra military spending to slashing the welfare bill.

What none have suggested, though, is the tonic the military truly needs: a little bit of discipline. In January last year, Declassified published an astounding piece on how the British military wastes its eye-watering budget. Listing one abandoned capital investment project after another, it’s a litany of billions upon billions flushed away on expensive war-kit that doesn’t work, costly development projects abandoned halfway through and massive investment in creaking aircraft carriers, with no crew to properly operate them. Even the National Audit Office hasn’t always been able to get the military to do its accounts properly.

This would be an impossible situation for any other government department. Rubbing salt in the wound, in order to get the Ministry of Defence June’s rejected £13bn uplift, every other department had to make a 1% cut to their budgets to fund it. “Austerity for thee, magic money tree for me” might well be our services’ secret motto.

Much of that money goes straight into the hands of the international arms industry (including Israeli arms firm Elbit). And the military’s ever-open chequebook appears to be famous amongst them. No wonder, then, that according to the Financial Times, the Farnborough Defence Show broke records last week for the number of defence contractors displaying their deadly wares. It’s big business too, with the total value of defence-related deals topping a record $40bn this year already. The last record, soon to be shattered, was in 2019, when they hit $59bn.

And Andy Burnham was right there – virtually, at least – addressing the “brilliant businesses” involved, and putting them at the heart of his plan to “reindustrialise the nation”. Starmer, of course, said it all first.

A case of the more things change, the more they stay the same?

From Novara Media via This RSS Feed.