As if Rachel Reeves hasn’t done enough damage – now she’s giving Putin just what he wants
Rachel Reeves has fallen into the same trap as predecessors by slashing defence spending whilst threats mount, balancing books today by mortgaging security.
Reeves is making a mistake. (Image: Getty)
The warnings came with all the subtlety of an air raid siren when the Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton stood before the great and the good at the Royal United Services Institute and professed nothing short of doom. Britain faced threats so severe that everyone needed to be ready to “serve” and “if necessary to fight”. The stony-faced Marshal warned attendees that the threat was “more dangerous than I have known during my career”.
Steady on, old boy. If we don’t see him next week wandering around Paddington in a sandwich board reading “The End Is Nigh”, we’ll call it a lucky escape. Except, rather annoyingly, he happens to be right.
The invasion of Ukraine, which itself came after Crimea, which came after Georgia, should have been a rather large hint that Putin might not be terribly interested in diplomatic niceties. Donald Trump, in his own fashion, has been harping for years that NATO should splash more cash on defence, and even the Germans are dusting off their Panzers.
Yet here in Britain we’ve been systematically dismembering our armed forces with the same sadistic glee as a teenager plucking the legs off a spider. The army has seen almost 4 in every 10 main battle tanks shelved. And boots on the ground? That’s down to record lows as well. We face cyber attacks several times a year, we’ve seen the Russians poisoning people in Salisbury, and our response appears to be crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.
And the Navy? We’re an island nation, and we appear to be allowing our fleet to vanish like the morning mist on a warm day. We now have seven frigates; in 2010, we had seventeen. The British Army is now predicted to be smaller than at any time since 1793, when we fought the French with muskets and tricorn hats.
We are a lion with no teeth, no claws, and increasingly, no roar.
Henry Kissinger, who knew a thing or two about power, once observed that “diplomacy is the art of restraining power”. But here is the inconvenient truth that seems to elude successive waves of ministers: you cannot restrain what you do not possess.
Diplomacy only works when backed by something real. Either a powerful economy that makes sanctions sting (we do not have one) or a military that makes tyrants think twice before trying it on (ditto).
Rachel Reeves, bless her, has fallen into precisely the same trap as those who came before her. She is balancing the books today by mortgaging our security tomorrow. It is fiscal prudence as performance art: look how responsible we are, slashing defence whilst Putin spends ever-increasing amounts of Russia‘s GDP arming to the teeth and vast chunks of government spending flow into his war machine.
We, meanwhile, dither over whether we can reach 2.5% in time. At this rate, we shall be defending Britain with a strongly worded letter and a dozen Boy Scouts armed with conkers.
Successive governments, Tory and Labour alike, have treated defence as an inconvenient budget line, something to be squeezed when the sums do not add up. This is not statecraft. This is accountancy masquerading as strategy, the political equivalent of foregoing your house insurance to pay for a weekend in Benidorm.
Britain once ruled the waves, but now she can barely patrol them. We once fielded armies that made tyrants quake, but now we struggle to field a single brigade without raiding the reserves and calling in favours. This is not managed decline; it is strategic incompetence dressed in a hi-vis jacket and carrying a clipboard.
And when the reckoning comes, not if, but when, we shall discover that you cannot negotiate from a position of weakness, no matter how clever your diplomats or how expensive your lawyers. Wars are not won by strongly worded communiqués from the Foreign Office. They are won by ships, tanks, troops, and the national will to use them.
Rachel Reeves and her predecessors have confused the ledger with the map. They have mistaken accountancy for statecraft. And when the bear comes knocking, we will all pay the butcher’s bill.
