Surprisingly, one of the critical issues leading to Starmer’s resignation was a disagreement within the cabinet about the defence budget and strategy. I have persistently argued that Labour’s defence party strategy was aimed at defending labour’s right against his left rather than the country against any threats.
The government has now published what they call the defence investment plan and so debates around that continue to occur. In addition the labour party’s national policy forum produce a section on defence.
Personally I’m not happy with the nature of debate and here are some notes I made while considering some issues raised by the politics of the DIP.
It seems I am not alone. See Luke Cooper’s substack article Andy Burnham should scrap the Defence Investment Plan and start again . He focuses on supply chains and rentierism, although he also looks at innovation speed, the lessons from Ukraine and he need for ‘exquisite’ weapons.
I agree with the views expressed in his article with P. Mary Kaldor https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/2025/06/16/organised-irresponsibility/,
By failing to raise taxes to address these needs, defence spending is now directly competing with investment in welfare, public services and infrastructure. These are all areas desperate for funding if we are serious about countering the rightwards trend in this country -we need to address the frustration of those who have faced years of austerity and develop resilience to malign interventions by hostile states.
and thus I also oppose the military industrial complexes and their political agents attempts to pay for the military budget by squeezing the Social Security budgets. The fact is the Tories have left us in a very poor position in terms of public finance, tax base, human capital infrastructure and defence capability.
My TLDR Is that the government’s approach to both the RAF and the Royal Navy is inadequate.
- https://share.gemini.google/SWU9zjKr8hrk defence treaties, should we be East of Suez?
- https://share.gemini.google/nFvIAzjrDAw4 is the UK premature in moving to a hybrid naval capability
- https://share.google/aimode/0xSkxGqmWxllSTUEs end of life of the Type 45/Daring
- https://share.google/aimode/Px0ZTXk5tlRXxfgFI defending the surface fleet
The RAF
- is overly dependent on US aircraft, including cargo planes, AWACS and helicopters, also the US satellite systems, Starlink, the GPS and the GNSS. We note that US software can be denied.
- I feel we need to consider our air defence capability including anti-missile and anti-drone defences for the UK. This might be best done with the European industrial syndicates supporting the Ukraine’s defensive capability.
See aksi Labour’s NPF on Defence, the conclusions are on pages 76 & 77.
See also the-uk-governments-strategy-for-international-development and the-defence-investment-plan, both at gov.uk.
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https://davelevy.info/wiki/tag/defence
See also the https://nationalpolicyforum.labour.org.uk/