14 Apr The Public: The Missing Piece in UK Readiness

If the assessment is that we must increase defence spending, the question isn’t just how do we do it militarily, it is how to do it politically. 

Lord George Robertson’s scathing attack on the UK’s defence capabilities has sent alarm bells ringing across the UK’s foreign policy and security community. The comments by the ex-NATO Chief and lead of the UK’s recent Strategic Defence Review are uncharacteristically forthright and public-facing. They are the comments of a traditional insider exasperated at the UK’s ability, or lack thereof, to respond to emerging global threats. 

And while his accusations of Treasury ‘vandalism’ of UK defence, ‘corrosive complacency’ within government and warnings that ‘our national security is in peril’ are intended to shock government into action, there is clearly truth to the argument that the UK urgently needs to invest further in its own defence. The very public difficulties of sending a warship to Cyprus and the depleted size of the UK army speak to the major challenges facing UK defence at a time of growing global insecurity.  

There are a number of practical challenges, from procurement to investment, which are undermining the UK’s defensive capabilities. But as much as anything, the challenge is political. This is something Robertson begins to scratch the surface of when he declared ‘we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget’. Defence is expensive. And if the threats are as real as everyone says they are, then some very difficult, very real tradeoffs will have to be made. 

The problem is that the public isn’t ready for that. Our research last year found that Britons felt safer than at any point since 2017. When we ask Britons about feelings of safety they talk about knife crime, the cost of living, and very occasionally about terrorism. They very rarely mention Russia, China or the Middle East. These international challenges feel far removed, distant from their everyday concerns about energy prices and their local schools and hospitals. Of course, the UK’s ability to continue to deliver all these things is contingent on a stable and secure international environment, but that is not a simple nor exciting message to deliver.

So while Britons broadly support increasing defence spending, our research consistently shows that they are unwilling to make the necessary trade offs, either in the form of cuts to welfare, health or education, or through increases to their taxes to fund it. That puts our democratically accountable leaders in a tough position.  They have very little fiscal or political headroom. Certainly not enough to fund the vast and rapid increases in defence spending that military leaders would like to see. 

So while Robertson and others are right to call out the need to invest more heavily in defence, it is important to do so with an understanding of the politics of the situation. The politics of a government desperately fighting off Reform, whose traditional voter base are not only instinctively nervous about defence spending but who are strong supporters of areas that would need to be cut. 

This is not to let the government off the hook. Rather it is to say we must accept the political reality of the situation. If the assessment is that we must increase defence spending, the question isn’t just how do we do it militarily, it is how to do it politically. Here there are a whole raft of options, of which Robertson’s SDR’s proposals of a ‘National Conversation’ about defence are part. It requires honest and frank conversations with the public, framed in the language that works – language such as resilience rather than conflict, conveyed by people they respect (not just military leaders who are assumed to be self interested), and via platforms they actually engage with. That won’t be easy. It will require a mindset shift in how we talk about national security and creativity in how we communicate it. But rather than just berating leaders for not taking national security seriously, it is time defence woke up to the political realities, and supported government in this mammoth mindset shifting task.