Despite the government’s repeated claims, Britain’s armed forces are not war ready and the government is not in real terms spending more on defence than any other government for a generation. As Lord (George) Robertson has trenchantly stated, “We are under-insured. We are under-prepared. We are under attack”.
Another British government, another great defence lie. It was not a day for pulling punches. At Iain Martin’s excellent London Defence Conference earlier this month, I was down to speak after the Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey MP. By the time he had finished his interview with Iain I had decided – Healey’s nonsense had to be challenged. Britain’s armed forces are not war ready and the Government is not in real terms spending more on defence than any other government for a generation. Two days later, the authors of the Government’s own Strategic Defence Review, Lord Robertson, Fiona Hill and General Sir Richard Barrons accused the Government of “corrosive complacency” and “putting the UK in peril”.
London is not just letting down the Americans and its NATO allies: it is letting down me, the British citizen because Britain can no longer be trusted as a reliable defence ally or provider. Britain is a paper power, a Potemkin power, not a real power. Ministers routinely mislead the British people about the appalling state of the Armed Forces and their fitness for action simply for narrow, short-term political gain.
The Government has said (and I quote), “The Government is providing a generational increase in defence spending with an extra £270 billion across this Parliament, ensuring no return to the hollowed-out forces of the past and the strategic defence review sets out our path to increasing warfighting readiness”. Shortly thereafter someone on the inside of the government (whom I greatly like and respect) contacted me and told me that the cost of social security had finally broken national security. He also said George Robertson’s much-lauded Strategic Defence Review 2025 has been abandoned under pressure from His Majesty’s (strategically-illiterate) Treasury and the hard-Left of the Parliamentary Labour Party to whom Prime Minister Keir Starmer is now beholden.
The proof? The Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and the Defence (Un)Readiness Bill. The DIP was meant to be published at the end of 2025 but is now unlikely to be released until the summer recess of Parliament to minimise political fall-out. This is because the Armed Forces need an additional £28 billion just to stand still with the cost of fixing the current Lilliputian conventional force £16 billion alone. The £18 billion that had been earmarked for defence when in 2025 Starmer said he wanted to put Britain’s forces on a war-footing has instead been diverted to appease the lunatic Left. The Defence Readiness Bill? It is far from ready.
This is a smoke-and-errors defence policy of a Government that believes it is more important to create the appearance of defence growth when under current plans there will be even less force than there is today. The current projections HM Treasury are using confirm there will be a REAL TERMS CUT in Britain’s forces in 2026 with a further £3.5 billion of ‘efficiencies’ (= cuts) sought. To mask this further cut to the defence budget the Treasury is instrumentalising defence inflation so that Starmer can claim that in cash terms Britain has reached the promised target of spending 2.5% GDP on defence by 2027.
London is also playing smoke and errors with what counts as defence expenditure. By inflating so called ‘resilience’ investments the impression is given of defence investment by other means so that London can pretend it is moving towards the NATO target of 5% GDP on defence of which 1.5% must be invested in greater ‘resilience’. Smoke and errors? ‘Resilience’ now includes expenditures that have nothing to do with defence, such as flood protection and military aid to the civilian authorities (MACA).
It is not just Britain’s allies and partners who are being let down. Take the Royal Navy. IF, the efforts to end the Type 45 destroyer gap and the Astute SSN gap are realised (a big if), AND the 8 Type 26 Global Combat Ships and 5 Type 31 Inspiration class ships are delivered as planned the Royal Navy will return to 10 deployable destroyers and frigates in the early 2030s. At present it has only 6 destroyers and frigates that are operational, some of which are the hull-expired Type 23 frigates. The planned 13 available ships will not be realised until 2041 at the earliest, and most certainly not the 17 ships that the Secretary of State John Healey claimed the Royal Navy had last month.
It is not all Healey’s fault. Such a dangerous lack of availability and readiness is the result of chronic underfunding and detached from reality paper planning that has been the defence pretence mantra of all governments ever since the disastrous 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).
Take the Type 23 frigates. Since 2000 the Lloyd’s Registry of naval ships has certified Royal Navy ships as fit for service. An uncertified ship imposes liability on its owners, in this case London. Consequently, the Royal Navy has been forced to scrap Type 23s due to utterly worn out and life-expired hulls far earlier than planned due to the cost of fixing them being so prohibitive.
Then there is the Norway deal. The creation of an integrated fleet of British and Norwegian navies to cover the vast Arctic and North Atlantic is a good idea. However, to ensure the Norwegians receive ships no later than the mid-2030s Type 26 hulls that were meant for the Royal Navy will now go to the Norwegians. Worse, another government insider told me that the Treasury is considering using the Norwegian deal to further reduce the number of hulls for the Royal Navy by counting the Norwegian ships as British ships. They are not. They will then either cut the programme or order much cheaper Batch 2 Type 31s. It is a similar story for the Army and the Royal Air Force.
It is a mark of the dangerous groupthink within the Westminster-Whitehall bubble that such defence sleight of hand is regarded as politically adept. In fact, it is a ‘stop the world I want to get off’ strategy beloved of short-termist government economists and strategically inept ministers who do not understand how wars start or their own responsibility in preserving the peace.
The consequences? Let me finish with a quote from another insider who is not at all prone to hyperbole: “I am about to say something that will surprise you. This is a government of traitors and appeasers. They have abandoned their allies, in the US, and the Gulf States, and Jordan, and Israel. They are letting down Japan on GCAP (Global Combat Air Programme) and will soon let down Australia on AUKUS. When Mr Starmer talks of getting the UK on a war readiness footing, remember he is talking about class war, not world war”.
Which brings me to the greatest lie of all. It is said the first duty of the state is to defend the realm. That is not how politicians see it. Their first duty is to themselves and to staying in power. If that means lying to the British people by imposing ever greater risk on them for short-term political benefit, then so be it.
Shame on you!
Dr Julian Lindley-French is chairman of the Alphen Group
