If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?
These words, written by St. Paul to the church in Corinth nearly 2,000 years ago, seem entirely apposite to the current political situation. Anyone sensible knows that either the trumpet needs retuning or we need a new trumpeter, as we must prepare for battle. Yet nothing is being done.
The army has cancelled live ammunition training for want of £30 million, an unimaginably trivial sum in terms of total government expenditure. It is like the nursery rhyme about losing the war all for the want of a horseshoe nail. The real defence budget is not the 2.6% boasted about by the government, but about two-thirds of that amount. Pensions paid out to retired soldiers are included in that figure. And as with so much of the government’s pensions payroll, it is done on a pay as you go system, so that no fund has been built up to pay them, as would be mandatory in the private sector.
The budget also includes the cost of GCHQ and of MI6, both of which are different forms of defence. Even worse, as I discovered as a Minister in the Cabinet Office, it includes useless duplicative committees within the very viscera of the administration. After all these deductions from the 2.6%, £30 million suddenly becomes an unaffordable cost in a nation whose economy is over £3 trillion and whose government spending is £1.3 trillion.
This leaves the realm essentially exposed. Earlier in the year, there was hope that this would be dealt with, as the then Defence Secretary resigned and was subsequently promoted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unfortunately, John Healey has turned out to be a run-of-the-mill political opportunist, rather than the principled statesman he appeared to be in June.
No extra money has been found and the promises of increased expenditure stretch out into distant parliaments after at least two elections, when none of the people making the promises will still be in office. This is disastrous, as the threats are clear and come in battalions, not as single spies.
Russia is the biggest and most obvious. Its failure in Ukraine seems to be making it an even more unpredictable opponent, with a recent cyber-attack on a German airport showing its increased aggression and willingness to test the boundaries of NATO’s resolve. The same people who warned that Russia was about to attack Ukraine and were widely ignored are now sounding the alarm for further attacks. How could the United Kingdom respond?
