Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[mongers]

So why wasn't this ramp up on defence spending started months ago, instead of now when it might well be just another Starmer headline grab?

Rather like the stream of delays and prevarication Jess Philip's initiative also faced with him?

[Sheilbh]

Because he's not a serious person or a leader.

It was meant to be announced in early autumn and has been repeatedly delayed because of the disputes between the Treasury and the MoD, leading to Healey and Carns resigning as well as increasingly alarmed calls from defence bods like Lord Robertson over how long it was taking and the indecisiveness. Obviously the line from Number 10 has been, in their favourite phrase, "working at pace". But there's a similar process across government - they won a predicted, predictable landslide majority and then launched a thousand reviews and consultations to work out what they should do, which I'd suggest would have been a good use of time in their fourteen years in opposition. In the meantime lots of drift.

I would add this is half what the MoD considers it needs to meet current threats and obligations. It doesn't cover the broader defence spending increase where the UK is aiming to get to 2.7% of GDP by 2029 (from 2.3%) and 3.5% by 2035 (no roadmap to get to the 3.5% + 1.5% NATO target the UK has endorsed). I'd note that I suspect the plan which includes defence spending increasing at double the current rate after the next election is about as credible as government fiscal projections that put a load of cuts/tax rises after the next election - it's very Lord make me chaste, but not yet.

I'd add that John Healey in his resignation made the point that threats to our and European security don't work to Treasury timelines. So we better hope nothing happens in the next few years (as well as our next election in 2029 I can't help but think the Treasury are hoping for a different mood in DC after Trump which means post-2029 they can quietly get rid of planned increases and rely on the Americans).

Edit: I'd add naval people I follow basically in despair. Yet again seems to be lowest priority following the trend of all post-Cold War defence spending plans (the Treasury hates capital expenditure) - at precisely the point of highest risk from Russia in our waters, when for the first time since the war we're probably not capable of securing the North Atlantic and the PM is working with the French on a naval deployment to Hormuz. Probably the biggest say-do gap we have and we have a lot.

Edit: Sorry current government plans are to hit 3% in the 2030s so actually short of the NATO target.

[garbon]

[Josquius]

I'm very skeptical on the military calls for massive defence spending increases to fulfil this big shopping list they have.
From what I've seen much of that stuff is very much building battleships in the 1930s.
I can't help but think of that joint Ukrainian-NATO naval exercise where the Ukrainian side sunk tonnes of NATO ships with just a few drones.

And army spending full stop just isn't something the UK should be too bothered with never mind custom developing these deafening apcs and the like. Our job is to cover the air and sea. We have allies far more concerned with land.

[Valmy]

Defense spending probably should be on the most recent conflicts and what weapons have proven most effective. Though in Britain and France's case you have far flung islands and territories to protect, you probably need a few ships.

Unless just park a few thousand drones in the Falklands. Actually that is probably cheaper.

[Sheilbh]

You can be sceptical on military calls for increased defence spending - but I think you should be equally sceptical at an embrace of unmanned warfare everywhere driven by the Treasury's enthusiasm for it as a lower cost solution. I mean this new type of ship for example - we're not going to commit to new destroyers or frigates (where we know their utility and have missed them in the last few months - we were not able to deploy to defend British bases) instead we will invent an entirely new type of mostly unmanned ship because it's cheaper.

Also I think there is a lot to learn from Ukraine and the UK's been very involved in their naval drones and success there. But you don't even need to give a fuck about the Falklands - the UK's geographic position means its major strategic role in NATO or for European defence is the Atlantic and the High North. There will be lessons from Ukraine - but the Black Sea and the North Atlantic are very different environments (even that exercise was, I believe, in the Baltic).

On massive defence spending - there's a few problems. What the government announced today is a £15 billion uplift - which is spread over four years. So an increase of 5.3% on previously announced defence budgets (I would add inflation's running at 3% at the minute so in real terms only about a 2% increase). That's the result of a year of political wrangling by the government since the Strategic Defence Review - and just to re-emphasise, this is money the MoD says is needed not to hit our NATO target (which we're nowhere near) but to meet our current commitments and the new commitments Keir Starmer's signed us up for in the last year. To put it in slightly wider context the total annual budget is about £1,400 billion - and the government has spent a year (and lost a defence secretary) arguing over an annualised increase of £3.75 billion. I'd add that Keir Starmer commended the Strategic Defence Review to the nation last June saying it was a wake-up call and the UK needed to move to a "war footing" in response to the escalating global threats. I'm not sure what war he's fighting but it's not the same one as Germany, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands or the Baltic states (acknowledging fiscal constraints here).

I'd add to that that there is traditional Treasury sleight of hand in today's announcement. Starmer has announced £15 billion and they have found £10.3 billion broadly by moving budgets from other departments. There is a missing £4.7 billion and it just says that will be found in the next budget (when Starmer won't be PM and Reeves won't be Chancellor - which is maybe why they shouldn't have been making this announcement). There is a need for a wider £10.7 billion of "efficiencies" for the wider increase in defence spending over the next three years - again the next guy's problems. But basically a big unfunded announcement by a PM and Chancellor on the way out because Starmer wanted a legacy.

But I'm broadly of the view of Mark Urban (former BBC Defence correspondent and Diplomatic editor) in his Substack when Healey resigned:

Game Over
Britain's failure to fund defence adequately is a turning point
Mark Urban
Jun 15, 2026

If we are to take one lesson from the British government's defence car crash of the past week it is that the battle to reverse this country's long term decline as a military power is over. Faced with the prospect of trying to switch billions from benefits to rebuild our national security, they have buckled, and barring an existential 1939-style crisis, this discussion is now over for the foreseeable future.

As historical setbacks go, what has happened is as significant as the 1956 Suez Crisis. Certainly, the deal that Keir Starmer offered John Healey – of increasing defence spending to 2.68% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030 was so bad that it triggered his resignation, and renders Britain's Nato pledge to get it to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 a near impossibility.

The 'back loading' of the spend needed to reach that target was flagged up in Healey's resignation letter. It means you need to find so much more cash during 2030-35 that it's hard to see any government, whether Labour, Tory, or indeed Reform, managing it.

To add insult to injury, Downing Street continues to insist that it was an amazingly generous offer that could only be achieved by strong-arming other government departments. And because of this, it is also suggested by No10 briefing, Dan Jarvis, Healey's successor as defence secretary, could not plead for more as a condition of taking the job, the decision is settled.

There is a chance, in an attempt to avoid the disastrous implications of such an outcome, that the service chiefs may go to Andy Burnham, if he comes the next PM, threatening resignation. Given that he has shown a tendency to make policy on the basis of the last person he listened to (note his flip-flop over the 'Waspi' pensions case, something that could have added billions a year to the benefits bill) perhaps it's worth a try.

But smart people who know the defence world – like former National Security Adviser and Cabinet Secretary Lord Mark Sedwill, have already been thinking through the implications of Starmer's settlement, and projecting the loss of one of Britain's major defence roles: strategic nuclear weapons; a navy capable of operating against peer adversaries in the North Atlantic; air forces able to support our allies in northern Europe; and an army that can be deployed on the Continent in support of Nato. Hinting that this last capability is now unaffordable (bad news for the Army in other words), Sedwill posted on social media this weekend, "Britain can't sustain a 'balanced force', we need integrated forces to protect the North Atlantic and High North against Russian aggression and hold their Arctic bases at risk".

That brings us back to the reality of that slo-mo spending timeline approved by the Treasury, estimated to yield £13bn more for defence over the next four years rather than the £28bn service chiefs wanted. It means that instead of glimpsing the sunlit uplands, as last year's Strategic Defence Review encouraged us to do, with its talk of putting the country back on a footing where it could defend this country against the forces of another state, we are now back to 'painful choices' and likely losing a major capability even though the money is still going up a little.

If you believe the counter-briefing we've heard from Labour figures hostile to Healey, this is because the Ministry of Defence is so useless at running its projects that it will waste any more money it's given. Well, yes, there've been some stinkers, project-wise, over the years, Healey can be criticised for being too slow to reform the department and not going far enough in his re-think of procurement.

That said, the emphasis on projects that have gone wrong is usually a distraction by those who don't want to spend the money on defence at all. Is the record of other departments – from HS2, to nuclear power, or NHS IT systems – really so different, if you cherry pick the worst examples?

In fact, the reason that the hitherto modest increases in defence spending have yielded so little up to now is because it is a system that was broken by successive governments that mouthed glib nonsense about war between states being a thing of the past, chosing to save money by kicking vital programmes into the long grass. If you don't order a new frigate for 17 years or skimp on Trident by shutting maintenance facilities and postponing refits, while repeatedly dodging decisions about new facilities for manufacturing nuclear warheads, then correcting these problems will cost you tens of billions.

Prevarication and a pretence that all was still well was the only way to balance the books ten years ago, when it was already quite clear that the post-Cold War peace dividend was over and the taps would have to be turned back on. Britain did spend 3.5% of its GDP on defence back in the Eighties – go back to 1961 when I was born and it was 6%!

Please forgive me for reproducing my favourite graph – that of declining defence spend. There are others that show the steadily rising cost of entitlements.


Nobody would suggest a 6% defence spending effort now – instead we have a country that has stumbled when asked to aim for half of that. And all at a time when it has become crystal clear that the United States' willingness to defend Europe is vanishing.

In the space of a few years, Britain's ability to lead that rebuild of European defence has ebbed away too. It is tumbling down the league table as a proportion of GDP spent (UK was 3rd highest in Nato in 2014, 12th in 2025), or deployable forces. The total spent is still high, but that brings us again back to the huge costs of maintaining nuclear weapons status.

So you hear the barbs about 'Belgium with nukes' and grumbling from the Nordic and Baltic countries that Britain is no longer fit to lead the Joint Expeditionary Force. And even if the current attempts to recapitalise the armed forces go well, things may not yet have bottomed out.

We may go down to a couple of frigates in commission during the next year or two. Even the ability even to maintain Trident nuclear submarines patrols may falter before the replacements are fit for service. Changing that outlook would require a spending commitment this government is evidently unwilling to make.

The thing that really annoys me is the dishonesty. A big problem on the diplomatic side of this is the increasing gulf between what we say we'll do for the security of our allies (far less new commitments like coalitions of the willing with France in Hormuz and Ukraine) v what we are able to actually do. The only upside is that it feels like most of them can see the gap and are pretty jaundiced about it so just increasing their defence spending more.

And FWIW I do think the Treasury has a point on defence procurement (though I think Urban is right to point to all the government IT projects, HS2 and basically all major government projects in all departments). I think part of the problem there is from the Treasury which is a very, very strong preference for the lowest cost bidder/"value for money" even if the operational teams are doubtful it's possible to deliver what's being promised at that price and suspect they're lowballing to win the contract and will then recoup their costs through the life of the project. Another bit I think is Britain's aversion to 90% of a solution for 50% of the cost (which France is very good at). Whether it's requiring 4,000 design changes for Sizewell C or numerous incredibly specifically engineered defence programs for a relatively small number of orders (and because they're so specific making it impossible to export them - as France and Sweden do - because of export controls/security).

And I think we are in an era when quantity has a quality all of its own and we're just going further down incredibly expensive, highly bespoke projects that somehow still don't work

Edit: Apparently Burnham had been briefed on the headline point - but not the funding gap he now needs to fill in his first budget.

[Josquius]

Yes absolutely on quantity over quality. This talk of not having frigates and destroyers... For what we need them for we don't need the latest high tech kit. A WW2 vintage standard ship with a few off the shelf modern radars et al lashed on would do the trick (hyperbole).
Money saved would also help improving conditions so we could man the things too.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe - I mean Russia has been engaged in a decade long expensive investment in their Arctic fleet (which our role in NATO/European security is to fight). I'd add thatwe are currently in a "frigate gap" because we basically went 30 years or so without building new one. The ones we have spend more time in the drydock being retrofitted and maintained than deployed. So what you're saying might be fine - if it wasn't coming on the back of 30-40 years of a peace dividend with the Royal Navy very much the unloved stepchild of the forces.

New frigates are being built but won't be available until 2030-ish. This is why it was such an urgent struggle to get some ships ready to deploy to the Eastern Med when Iran started launching missiles at the bases in Cyprus - the French navy were able to deploy quickly (but also by cancelling a planned deployment to the Atlantic) and help defend our base. I'd add that as well as our Atlantic role, Starmer and Macron have proposed a Franco-British force in the Hormuz once that's re-opened. This is where I think the quantity matters because you can have the most advanced ships you want - but they can only be in one place at a time. I do think probably lower spec but more would be worth doing. That is where I think the Treasury has a fair criticism of the MoD and every other government deparment - flipside is they know getting money for big capital expenditure projects is difficult so over-engineer it to make it "perfect" and doing everything.

Similarly I wish your last point was correct. But part of the way the Treasury have funded this small increase over the next four years is by cutting the program to improve housing for service personnel and their families (the single biggest reason people give for leaving). They've also made big cuts to the cadet program (which is a key recruitment tool) - I can't imagine that costs very much really - I'd add it's also the second time the government have specifically cut cadet programs for state schools (can't help but feel there's a class angle which is actually just reinforcing the class divide).

I didn't see it but quite like that in his penultimate PMQs Starmer and Badenoch could find some shared ground: hating the Lib Dems And it is mad - but an example of how NIMBYism works in Britain and how opportunistic the Lib Dems are (which is why Labour and Tory activists tend to hate the Lib Dems more than each other) - it's also why the Lib Dems are so good at local politics, because they're utterly shameless. The Lib Dem MP rose to note his disappointment at proposals for a new hospital in his constituency. Apparently he's very happy with a new hospital - but it's going to be built in the wrong place Starmer noted "his position has been to demand a new hospital and then object to building it". Then quoted some local Lib Dem election literature "'If the hospital goes ahead there will be no golf course.' I can't think of anything more Lib Dem." Then Badenoch stood up and said she wanted to associate herself with Starmer's remarks on the Lib Dems.