The sweeping electoral victory of Sir Keir Starmer’s rejuvenated Labour Party marks a political caesura in the UK. After 14 years of frequently turbulent and occasionally dysfunctional Conservative Party rule, the Labour Party has returned to power, backed by solid electoral majorities in England, Scotland and Wales. The new Labour Government has inherited a country facing a series of deep-seated economic and social problems, with public finances in a parlous state after years of growing national debt and underinvestment in public services. Labour, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has noted, ‘inherits the worst set of economic circumstances since World War Two’. It also confronts the most challenging international security environment since the early days of the Cold War, which means the crafting a new security and defence policy is a pressing priority for the new government.
The UK is widely regarded as one of Europe’s preeminent military powers (along with France). The British armed forces are configured to provide ‘full spectrum capabilities’, from nuclear deterrence and combat-capable conventional forces to sophisticated intelligence gathering, cyber warfare capabilities and a globally competitive defence industrial sector. However, over the last decade or more, growing problems have emerged which have led to serious concerns about the ability of the armed forces to provide the capabilities and expertise required to contribute effectively to international security and European deterrence. Over previous decades, the defence budget has steadily shrunk and there is a broad consensus that the UK armed forces have been ‘hollowed out’. The defence budget fell from 2.6% of GDP in 2010 (the last year of the previous Labour government) to 2.0% in 2015. The conservative government was slow to wake up to the need to reinvest in defence after 2014, and failed to address the problem of declining military capabilities. Even though the defence budget grew steadily after 2014 to the current level of 2.3% of GDP today, it did so at a much slower rate than the average for all other European NATO members (20% as opposed to the European NATO average of 54%, according to the NATO definition of defence expenditure).
However, unlike some of the economic and social problems confronting the new Labour government, the growing problems facing the British armed forces cannot be attributed solely to the incompetence and inefficiency of the former Conservative government. Instead, they reflect more deeply rooted and structurally based problems that have plagued British defence policy for decades. Essentially, they are a consequence of an over-ambitious foreign policy strategy. This has led to a disjunction between the economic and financial capabilities available to the British state and its ambition to play a leading role in European defence as well as make a wider contribution to international peace and security.
The UK’s military capabilities give it an important tool of diplomatic influence and provide justification for its permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The professionalism and competence of its armed forces are one reason why the UK has been able diplomatically to ‘punch above its weight’. Britain seeks to make a key contribution to deterrence and defence in Europe, and to play a global role through partnerships and alliances with US, Japan and Commonwealth nations. However, as the international security environment has sharply deteriorated, with intensifying great power competition and major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the UK armed forces have found themselves called upon to do more and more with less and less. This has left them overstretched, under resourced and poorly funded. As the House of Commons Defence Committee noted in its report in February 2024, ‘the UK Armed Forces have deployed above their capacity in response to the worsening security situation’. They ‘all have capability shortfalls and stockpile shortages, and are loosing personnel faster than they can recruit them. They are also consistently overstretched, and this has negatively impacted retention as well as delaying the development of warfighting readiness’.[1]
The problem of overstretch is compounded by the aspiration to field full spectrum capabilities, including an independent nuclear deterrent. There is now a broad political consensus that Britain’s nuclear deterrent provides the ‘cornerstone of our national security’, but funding it consumes a large chunk of the defence budget, meaning that there is less for conventional forces. Britain’s nuclear deterrence has long suffered from underinvestment and inefficient procurement programmes. The need for a more effective management and delivery of nuclear deterrence capability and infrastructure (everything from submarines, missiles, warheads and support facilities) has been long recognised but remains unresolved, despite its designation as a ‘national endeavour’[2].
Providing a continuous at-sea deterrence has, since 1969, been the responsibility of the Royal Navy (RN), Britain’s ‘senior service’. The Royal Navy has historically been central to the defence of the British Isles and projection of British power overseas. Whereas the British Army is relatively small and can only make a marginal contribution to NATO’s regional defence plans, the RN is expected to contribute 20-25% of NATO maritime forces.[3] The ability to project naval power has been considerably strengthened by the acquisition of two aircraft carriers, but the navy has struggled to acquire sufficient F-35Bs and train pilots for carrier operations.[4] Moreover deploying a full carrier strike group would occupy a considerable portion of the deployable Royal Navy frigates, destroyers and attack submarines. The RN is also short of supply ships, as well as dry dock facilities for maintenance and repair. Investment in naval dockyards has been woefully insufficient, and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is also facing problems of overstretch and poor conditions, with officers set to take strike action over pay for the first time in the service’s history.[5]
The British Army has also been hollowed out after successive defence budget reductions and is now the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic wars. It is no longer able to provide a division to NATO, and currently would struggle to field three brigades. It is short of artillery, tanks, munitions and air defence, and its battlefield communications systems require urgent upgrading. It also lacks critical enablers like combat engineering and medical capabilities. Considerable investment has been made in the Ajax armoured vehicle programme, a fully-digitised, tracked, medium-weight series of vehicles which is designed to be the army’s ’eyes and ears’ on the battlefield. The Ajax was given its first cold weather test in Sweden in January 2024[6], but the procurement project has faced repeated problems and delays (most recently, with vibration-induced hearing problems for some crew members[7]).
Finally, all three branches of the armed forces face problems of recruitment and retention of personnel, particularly the retention of specialist personnel in what are termed ‘pinch points’ (which can impact deliver of outputs). The new Labour government has already sought to address the problem of recruitment and retention by addressing the long-running issue of pay. For years, public sector pay increases have failed to match those in the private sector. As of 29 July 2024, the government has announced a pay increase of 6%. It has also promised to ‘improve morale by tackling the poor state of service accommodation and to establish an Armed Forces Commissioner as a strong independent voice to improve service life’.[8] However, the bigger problem remains: how to make the British armed forces fit for purpose?
Since becoming leader of the Labour Party in 2020, Sir Keir Starmer has sought to reposition Labour as a responsible party of government committed to a strong national defence. Labour argues that ‘the first duty of any government is to keep the nation safe and protect our citizens’, and that ‘defence is in our DNA’. Labour’s election manifesto underlined the party’s commitment to the UK’s nuclear deterrent as ‘absolute’, and promised to increase defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP ‘as soon as we can’. Labour also underlined its commitment to NATO: ‘As the party that founded NATO, we maintain our unshakeable commitment to the alliance’. The new Secretary of Defence John Healey has promised that Labour will apply a ‘NATO test’ to all defence programmes to ensure that they meet the requirements of the alliance in full. Already in October 2022, he said that ‘Labour will make the UK a leading voice in Europe on collective security and defence. This is our unshakeable commitment to NATO in action’. Labour has also promised to fix the Ministry of Defence’s broken procurement system, appointing a new National Armaments Director and working to build a more effective partnership with the defence industries.
Central to the new Labour Government’s defence policy is a Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which will seek to examine the international security landscape, identify current and emerging threats, and advise on how best to organise and equip the armed forces in order to meet them. Appointed on 16 July 2024, the Review will be headed by Lord Robertson (former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General) and is due to report in the first half of 2025.[9] The hope is that this ‘root and branch’ strategic review will consider the overall shape and capability of the armed forces, not just the amount of money they require.[10] The central dilemma facing all governments at this time is to find a balance between expanding the size of the armed forces using existing capabilities (so that they are ready to ‘fight tonight’), or investing in cutting edge technology which will create more potent capabilities at a future point (‘fight tomorrow’). Investing in new technologies such as AI (which will facilitate battlespace information processing and decision-making), drones and uncrewed systems will create more lethal and potent military capabilities in the future. But the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the highly attritional nature of modern warfare and the consequent need for mass in terms of munitions, logistics and resupply – yet as we have seen, the British armed forces are dangerously low on munitions and sustainable logistics.
This dilemma between size, readiness for combat (‘fight tonight’) and long-term military transformation based on investment in new technologies and capabilities (‘fight tomorrow’) has been dubbed the ‘iron triangle’. [11] Unlike Poland, which has focused on rapidly building up one of the strongest European militaries in NATO, the UK has tended to focus on investment in scientific innovation and new technologies in order to field more lethal forces in the future. The UK has assumed that it would have several years notice of a major conflict, and the armed services have therefore acquiesced to a hollowing out their capabilities in return for investment in long-term programmes. The problem is that many of these innovative programmes will not bear fruit until well into the next decade, whereas concerns are growing across Europe that a serious threat from Russia could emerge within 3-5 years.
Labour’s Strategic Defence Review will therefore need to grapple with the dilemmas of this ‘iron triangle’ and find a balance between immediate requirements to address shortfalls in equipment and personnel, and investing in long-term military transformation. It will also need to recalibrate the balance between Britain’s global role and the requirements of making a greater contribution European defence and deterrence. The slogan of ‘Global Britain’ was widely used by the conservatives after Brexit, who also spoke of a Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ to UK’s foreign and security policy.[12] However, the hard fact is that the UK’s main trading partners are in the EU, and that Europe is the critical region for British security. Given the overstretch of its armed forces and the growing threat from Russia, the Labour government will have to find a more appropriate and sustainable balance between cooperation with its Indo-Pacific partners and consolidating its role as a leading player in European security through NATO.
Early indications are that Labour will reverse the Indo-Pacific tilt and refocus on Europe. It will continue with the AUKUS defence agreement, but concentrate the UK’s constrained defence capabilities on Europe. Along with its ‘NATO first’ commitment, Labour seeks to enhance defence cooperation with key European allies and the EU. The UK already enjoys close defence cooperation with France through the 2011 Lancaster House agreement, and Germany has now been identified as a key European defence partner. The new Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Berlin (along with Warsaw and Stockholm) in the first 24 hours of assuming office, and on 24 July Secretary of State for Defence John Healey signed a joint declaration with his German counterpart to create ‘enhanced defence cooperation’ between the UK and the Federal Republic.[13] The aim of this enhanced cooperation is to strengthen the European pillar of NATO; deepen cooperation in the framework of Forward Land Forces and NATO’s Advance Plans; enhance military interoperability; coordinate long-term military support for Ukraine; and expand defence industrial cooperation.
A primary concern of the new Labour is to repair relations with the EU. Along with deepening defence cooperation with Germany and its JEF partners, Labour has pledged to forge ‘am ambitious new UK-EU security pact to strengthen cooperation on the threats we face’. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, cooperation between Brussels and London has greatly increased in intelligence sharing, sanctions coordination and training and equiping Ukrainian troops. A UK-EU could include participation in CSDP missions and enhanced cooperation on issues such as illegal migration, border control and terrorism. The big prize for the UK would be greater access to PESCO projects and EDF funding. The UK has some influential advocates in the EU – not least the new High Representative Kaja Kallas – but EU decision-making is notoriously slow and cumbersome and riven with internal differences, and there are concerns about a lack of political will and imagination in Brussels. There are already indications that the Labour government recognises that a formal treaty will take a long time to negotiate and ratify, and may therefore opt for a joint declaration instead.[14]
To conclude, the new Labour government recognises the urgency of defence and security policy, but is constrained by the dire condition of the British economy. There is no great divide on defence policy with the Conservatives, and thus we can expect to see a recalibration and reconfiguration of defence priorities, not a radical shift in direction. The best to be hoped for is a more competent and pragmatic approach to government, and a less ‘ideological’ view of European cooperation. Early indications are promising, but how the new government tackles the political and security challenges of the coming months will demonstrate whether Labour is able to successfully address the deep-seated problems facing British defence policy and the UK armed forces.
