Labour claims to be defending Britain from new threats, but its warfare state is steeped in old thinking

It is hard to take this Labour government seriously or literally. In presenting its much-heralded strategic defence review and calling for a new national resolve, it not only treated parliament with contempt – making big policy announcements outside the House of Commons – it gave the country ludicrously exaggerated claims for a “defence dividend”: the idea that increasing investment in the defence sector will boost growth and create high-quality jobs. It failed to explain why money for arms should be a better stimulus for the economy than, say, funding nurseries.

The government claims that the world has become so much more dangerous that a “root and branch” review of defence is needed. It claims that transformation and innovation are essential. Except there is very little that is innovative or transformative about the new approach. The programme it has come up with is a doubling down on the old – on the renovation of the “sovereign nuclear warhead” programme (to be mounted on very un-sovereign US-made and maintained missiles), on up to 12 new nuclear powered submarines, on cyber and drones, which have been staples in defence procurement discussion for well over a decade. The US remains, despite everything, Britain’s “first partner”, with whom ties should be strengthened. This is no great rupture with the past. And, as many have pointed out, there is a huge gap between the rhetoric and the spending, which will merely increase from 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP.

How are we to explain this? Labour has relished the opportunity to present itself as the party of rearmament, just as Tony Blair gleefully believed he was the first to make the Labour party a war party. Its unseemly enthusiasm is reflected in Keir Starmer’s childish talk of “a battle-ready, armour-clad nation” or of British “warriors”. The prime minister even claimed “we will innovate and accelerate innovation to a wartime pace” and become “the fastest innovator in Nato”. This is Labour wanting to become the Tory party of its imagination, to purge itself of the stain of social democracy, to indulge itself in nationalist nostalgia, not least for wartime. Continued in the Guardian 4th June 2025