British Defence Policy under Starmer
how will Starmer and Healey handle defence?
Introduction
Keir Starmer is very likely to win the UK general election on the 4th of July. This means that John Healey -- currently the shadow defence secretary -- will likely be the next defence secretary, so what will this change in leadership mean for UK defence policy?
European Political Community meeting
One of the first things they will do is attend the summit of the European Political Community (EPC) on the 17th of July, just 13 days after the general election. This is scheduled to take place at Blenheim Palace (pictured above) in Oxfordshire.
The EPC was set up by Emmanuel Macron in 2022 as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All European countries, except Russia and Belarus, are invited to join. According to its website:
The European Political Community (EPC) is a bi-annual gathering of leaders from 44 European countries (thus far) to provide a platform to discuss strategic issues in Europe, filling a much-needed gap for unscripted dialogue among leaders of EU member states, candidate countries and other European countries after Russia blew up the continental security order with its full-scale war against Ukraine.
The EPC is thus a talking shop, with no actual powers. Since it is Starmer's first summit, it would make sense for him to do a lot of listening, and see what ideas other European leaders have towards countering Putin and increasing Europe's security. Then the Starmer government can make proposals to some or all of those countries based on these ideas.
After all, many European countries are concerned about Russia, and it is also a problem if Trump is elected and as a consequence the USA turns its back on Europe: if Trump refuses to support Ukraine, as he has repeatedly threatened, UK and other European countries spending 2.5% of GDP on defence might not be enough. (Note both the outgoing Tory government and incoming Labour one have pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% when they can afford it.)
While Europe has 10 times Russia's GDP, GDP isn't instantaneously translatable into military force -- to do so takes takes time and willpower.
Most European countries consider defending against Russia to be a high priority, and I'm sure many of the leaders have ideas on how to do so, so it makes sense for Starmer and Healey to listen to what they have to say and take part in whatever structures that are set up. These structures could become an embryo of a European military alliance, something I have previously written about.
How to help Ukraine
In a previous post I listed how Britain can most effectively help Ukraine:
today in 2024 the most pressing defence need is to help Ukraine with:
ammunition, particularly 155mm artillery rounds
air-defence missiles, for example the Starstreak, CAMM and Aster missiles used by the UK armed forces
air-defence guns, similar to the German Gepard or Polish Pilica
short range battlefield drones
long range drones and cruise missiles, able to wage a strategic bombing campaign against Russia
One reason why ammunition production in Europe is low is that most of it is done by private companies under commercial incentives. It doesn't make sense for them to keep factories open unused waiting for orders that in peacetime conditions won't come. So the companies naturally shut factories down if there isn't enough demand.
It is no use complaining that this is what they are doing, when they are only following the incentives imposed on them by the system. Instead what needs to happen is a series of state-owned factories that can be kept ticking over with low rate production in times of non-crisis but which in an emergency can be quickly expanded to produce a lot more. Britain did have state-owned Royal ordnance factories, but the Tories sold them off in 1987.
As well as setting up the new state-owned ammunition factories, Labour could usefully make the point that the Tories' ideology of privatisation has led to Britain's defences being weakened. As well as making Starmer/Labour look strong on defence with the voters, this would earn Starmer a bit of credit with the left of his party.
Making defence spending better value for money
Everyone accepts that there's a lot of waste in British defence spending. The Labour party certainly do, as they wrote a Dossier of waste in the Ministry of Defence 2010-2021.
Shadow defence secretary Healey recently said, of the troubled Ajax infantry fighting vehicle (pictured above):
Ajax is the biggest defence procurement failure for a decade. The Conservatives have spent at least £4bn to date on AJAX and only received 44 vehicles – failing British troops and British taxpayers. Tory Defence procurement has been a catalogue of failures over fourteen years. Ministers have no plans to fix the system, which the Public Accounts Committee describes as "broken and wasting taxpayers money".
So why is there waste and what can be done about it? I think the biggest single factor is the desire to gold-plate everything, to give it the best specs that can be achieved. And I suspect one underlying cause of this is, when weapon systems are being designed, well-meaning people saying "wouldn't it be great if..." and then adding a requirement that sounds good but increases overall cost. YouTuber Perun has a good video on this: How Procurement Destroys Armies.
For example, Ajax is based on the existing ASCOD vehicle which is in service with the Austrian and Spanish armies. But did the UK simply buy ASCOD as-is? No. They insisted on a new engine, new transmission, new turret, new gun, new armour, etc. In effect making it a whole new vehicle. What they should have done is bought an existing vehicle off-the-shelf. There are plenty of families of vehicles they could have chosen, such as the wheeled Patria AMV or Boxer, or the tracked CV90.
Does this mean accepting a lower-specced vehicle? Maybe, but a vehicle that's in service is worth a lot more than one that's been delayed due to difficulties in getting it to work, or one that can't be procured in large enough numbers due to cost over-runs.
The one area this doesn't apply is in fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles, where it is necessary to have the very latest technology with the best stealth and sensors to win. This is because:
The air is a big open environment where you are liable be detected by the enemy's passive and active sensors, especially if they have better technology than you do. Whoever detects first usually wins.
Once an enemy aircraft has been detected, the sensors tracking the aircraft and the manoeuvrability and range of the missile sent to shoot it down largely determine the outcome.
The land environment, on the other hand, is a lot more messy: troops can hide in soft or hard cover, can burrow into the ground for protection, or can camouflage themselves. This messiness is why military AI for land warfare is likely to lag in development versus air warfare.
So it makes sense for the UK to continue with the Global Combat Air Programme to produce a new stealth aircraft, in conjunction with Italy and Japan.
See also
On the creation of a European Military Alliance
This insistence in designing prototypes instead of buying off-the-peg solutions runs through UK government procurement. As you say, that's where most of the "waste" (and corruption, IMO) originates.
I've only come to realise this due to the debate on the ferries, but it's clearly a systemic problem.