Snapshot of _Starmer: Labour will increase defence spending to 2.5% and boost nuclear deterrent_ :
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“And we will also tackle this business of waste because there’s £15bn worth of waste in the system in procurement and other projects and we cannot allow that to happen.”
Big if true, fixing procurement so things like the Ajax debacle don’t happen again should mean cash injection can go back into the right places, £15bn is a massive portion of the overall defence budget
Short of completely changing the tender process, this is far more difficult then it at first appears. Projects regularly go massively over budget and sunk cost fallacies sink in.
The unpopular but easiest thing to do would be to buy off the shelf stuff that already works but insist on licensing the manufacturing to be done here (like the yanks do for most foreign military gear).
The main problem with our procurement process imo is the top brass changing their minds and penny pinching.
We have a habit of not looking far enough forward so during a contract that might take say 5 years we change the requirements which increases the price that plus trying to save money by not fitting out say a very expensive war ship with a certain capability then having to retrofit it years later for double the cost. It's maddening.
There's a very real argument that the builder deliberately sabotaged the ability to retrofit electric catapults in a cost effective manner, despite it being part of the design brief.
The same builder who would lose an awful lot of money if the UK government had just bought a couple of wings of F/A-18s.
Isn't that a little mad? I mean let's say we did actually go to war. Not just an excuse to bomb a random country half a world away, surely if procurement is so complicated then such military hardware is useless in times of actual conflict. What can we build en masse in the UK?
The trouble with off the shelf is it has no advantage over the enemy.
If I buy the same F16 models the Saudi airforce have it becomes a battle of numbers and the UK military looses it's edge.
That is undoubtedly true.
Britain's recent conflicts have been with opposition forces over whom they have had substantial military equipment advantages. There is no doubt that having better fighter jets will win you air supremacy quicker and with less losses (although pilot capability obviously plays a big part) just look how many planes UK has lost in combat despite being in conflicts in bosnia/iraq/Afghanistan
Completely, everyone wants to fix procurement but no one knows how really, it’s insanely complicated. Often tenders are a race to the bottom and bidders know that they won’t be able to deliver for the agreed price, but also know the Government won’t be able to take a bath on the initial outlay politically.
I mean that smacks of the ususal "efficiency savings", which is what every government blue or red talks about.
Fixing procurement would mean being absolutely brutal politically, especially when it came to domestic production. The New Medium Helicopter is a good example. The Black Hawk is the obvious choice given it's a proven design, but Leonardo are leaning heavily on their existing UK production (rather than a good track record with their offering). There will be enormous pressure to go with them just because they have a larger UK footprint.
Also I would argue that you can't fix procurement without more money. A big reason it's inefficient is because money is drip-fed and projects remain underfunded for years. Much like how you can't increase NHS efficiency without the capital spend to improve infrastructure and resources, e.g. IT. Or going with seemingly cheaper options that end up being a disaster - see Nimrod MRA4 where someone thought we could just bolt on new wings to existing airframes.
If I'm not mistaken, going with blackhawk would mean, effectively, an end to helicopter production in the UK. Restarting that at some point in the future would be extraordinarily difficult, not to mention extraordinarily expensive. Does that justify the risk of going with Leonardo?
No, it doesn't justify the risk of going with Leonardo.
Helicopters are something we can source fairly easily from abroad. Whereas Yeovil aren't exactly pumping out dozens of brand new helicopters every year for non-UK customers. They're constantly used as a stick to beat the MOD with - "we'll have to close if you don't give us that new contract".
If Leonardo can't keep UK production without being awarded NMH then it's not worth it.
Also Sikorsky has said they'll have at least some UK part production and possibly a final assembly line in the UK. So it's not like some money wouldn't go back into the economy.
If the new Labour government give NMH to Leonardo you can bet it will be just more empty rhetoric on reform, with them putting politics rather than defence first.
If I'm honest I don't think it has anything to do with money going into the economy in the short term with this contract. I think the prospect of losing the ability to manufacture helicopters in country should be seen as a national security risk truthfully.
At current, and for the forseable future, helicopters form a core part of our armed forces, for all 3 branches, without which we would be fucked. I can't think of a future where a lack of clandestine ability to support the future of these platforms doesn't constitute a threat to our security. Yes we will practically always (as do most countries), be going into projects with other countries, but I would not like to see a future where we are wholly dependant on other countries for this capability.
For the record, I do agree that blackhawk, at a glance, makes more sense with being an established, well proven platform.
Helicopters are way down the priority list for domestic production. If we need to be able to build helicopters we need to be able to build everything else - tanks, drones, missiles, small arms, etc.
If Labour wants to pump in money just to keep Yeovil it can, but it needs to be additional money. If there's not going to be more cash then it will need to reduce risk by going with proven designs even if UK plants have to close.
Plus Leonardo focus on small and medium lift. They don't do large helos or attack helos.
>Helicopters are way down the priority list for domestic production. If we need to be able to build helicopters we need to be able to build everything else - tanks, drones, missiles, small arms, etc
Thats the thing, we can. We have the capability yo build just about everything our military needs. From syringes for army medics to drones for recon missions to fast jets for whatever you need them for, we CAN build them ourselves.
> Plus Leonardo focus on small and medium lift. They don't do large helos or attack helos.
I'm not sure what point you're making there, we're on about a medium helicopter program.
>If Labour wants to pump in money just to keep Yeovil it can, but it needs to be additional money. If there's not going to be more cash then it will need to reduce risk by going with proven designs even if UK plants have to close.
The AW149 is an existing proven design, its not as widespread in use as the blackhawk, but it is In service with other users.
I'm also not sure if you're implying that choosing the AW149 is a risky choice? Leonardo are an experienced aircraft manufacturer with many years of experience. The idea that there's a high degree of risk associated with choosing it over the Blackhawk is a bit disingenuous (if this wasn't your point I do apologise as I have clearly misinterpreted your point)
First, you're conflating theoretical industrial capability in the future with the situation now. We don't have, for example, a sovereign modern tank design or UK companies manufacturing tanks. We're heavily reliant on foreign companies to make Challenger 3 a reality, and the only reason it's happening is because we already have the Challenger 2 as a basis to do the work.
Yes, we could build anything in the UK. But without tens of billions of extra money to set up production lines and make new designs it won't happen. Labour are specifically refusing to give extra funding until it's convenient. They're putting all their hopes on "procurement reform". Buying more expensive, domestic hardware isn't reforming procurement, it's the status quo.
Having UK assembly lines for products designed by foreign companies outside the UK that use key parts made outside the UK doesn't give us a sovereign defence capability.
Second, it was you that said we needed to be able to build everything in the UK. So we need attack helicopters and heavy lift made here too by your logic.
Third, the fact the AW149 is theoretically in service overseas means nothing. Neither the Egyptian nor Thai militaries are known for their rigorous military testing and deployments. Their birds may be fine for military parades, but do we know this will work in harsh environments during combat?
Even the Poles can't be trusted 100% to show everything is fine. They're not known for going all over the world to test their capabilities. Have they tried flying them in Scandanavia during winter? Have they tried low-level night ops yet? Have they been to hot and humid countries with them? *Have they received sufficient numbers to do any testing at all?*
This sort of stuff is really important. We've had to spend large sums of money sorting out the Type 45 destroyer propulsion systems because no one knew their top of the line engines would struggle in warm waters. If it turns out that the AW149 doesn't work properly in certain conditions, it's likely the MOD will have to pay to sort it out. There is no way Leonardo would agree to a contract that means they'd suck up all the costs of any rectification work that wasn't down to negligence or faulty assembly. As I said, they use UK production as a stick to beat us with.
A handful of customers doesn't mean the AW149 is a proven system. **More importantly, if it's not the best candidate we shouldn't buy it just because it's local.**
That's how we got into the mess with Challenger 2. The Army review board wanted Abrams or Leo2, but we went with Challenger 2 (despite being slow and having a rifled barrel that wasn't compatible with NATO partners) "because Vickers". Vickers closed down anyway when we couldn't sell the Challenger 2 in significant numbers.
If Yeovil can't survive without UK orders, at some point it will fail anyway.
Jokes about why anyone would want to visit Barrow aside, I’m genuinely shocked Starmer is the first Labour leader in three decades to visit. That means the last time was either pre PM Blair or John Smith. I’m not surprised Corbyn didn’t, but shocked no one else did, especially as it’s both a key piece of defense infrastructure (good photo ops!)!and typically a Labour seat that has gotten less safe over time (went Tory in 2019, but Labour only just held it in 2015)
Blair’s Labour had a massive spat with the CND so it’s no surprise he didn’t visit as leader, it’s one of the reasons Blair’s Labour didn’t allow any nuclear plants to be built in the 2000’s
Views from Barrow's train station are something else.
Coach loads of Navy personnel coming in and out at all hours though. If you're not passing through ymmv.
>He is announcing a new “triple lock” commitment, promising that a Labour government after the next election would build at least four new nuclear submarines at Barrow, keep the continuous at-sea deterrent and fund any future upgrades needed to the fleet.
Good god, yes. Brilliant framing, too.
>“It is the foremost protection that we have because, as the name suggests, it is the deterrence against the highest form of threat that our country could face. So that’s why we commit to it."
Absolute breath of fresh air to have a leader again *who actually gets it*.
A leader who actually cares about being proactive. Someone who wants to engage with our defence industry to enhance our deterrents. It’s been so long since we had a leader like that.
I was looking at our defense spending over the last 20 years. Its really interesting to see it was pretty much about 2.5% during new Labour and sub 2% during tory power, aside from the last year or 2 when it just scrapes 2%
The Tory figures were also heavily massaged.
They decided that they should start including service pensions, and the budget for the intelligence services, which all inflate the figures.
They also decided that the MoD had to fully fund the nuclear deterrent rather than coming from a separate fund.
These masked massive real-terms cuts - the army was almost a third bigger when the Tories took over in government.
And I'm sure those four shiny new submarines totally won't be built by a French-Chinese conglomerate, because we don't have the nounce to build a fucking barbeque anymore.
They are currently being built by BAE in Barrow-in-Furness. Government industrial policy for ages is that warships are built in the UK in order to maintain our shipbuilding skills
What are you talking about? We're building an Astute class submarine, one of the best in the world by the way, right now. There is currently a skills shortage but we definitely still have the expertise.
Neither France nor China has the capability to build submarines even close to the quality of British Hunter-killers.
The only countries that can are America and Russia.
The great thing is, as a PM, you can say this publicly. And privately you can say in the secret letters of last resort "Nuclear War is a fools game. Do not retaliate and add to the sum of human misery on Earth". You can literally do both.
A deterrent that has been ignored, is no longer a deterrent.
At that point, your argument is "kill these civilians because I payed good money for those nukes"
In the event that the UK has already been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust I'm not sure that "getting your money's worth" from the nuclear arsenal is worth worrying about.
If the nuclear deterrent has failed to deter then the money has already been flushed down the toilet.
>Absolute breath of fresh air to have a leader again *who actually gets it*.
It's amazing how relieving a politician with a good chance of winning and actual competence is.
It's baffling how people don't get that nuclear weapons are what make you a UK instead of a Ukraine.
Also, you get privileged middle class people ranting about the waste of military expense, while living a safe, comfortable lifestyle defended by that military expense.
I mean, because its entirely not true.
Japan, Korea, Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia aren't nuclear powers but they're definitely not Ukraines either.
Not that I'm advocating for getting rid of the nukes, but it's a stupid point to make. Ukraine is kind of u unique in that it has shit geography, and is exceptionally poor. Its entire pre war GDP even in PPP terms is less than London..
But all are protected by a nuclear umbrella of one form or another, and even then Germany and Italy have nuclear weapons forward deployed to their air forces, and Japan maintains stockpiles of enriched fuel and the technical capabilities to build a weapon in extremis.
All implicitly or explicitly fall under the nuclear aegis of of a nuclear armed state.
Germany, Spain and Italy are in NATO. And explicitly fall under the defence of 3 nuclear powers.
Japan and S.Korea through their military alliance with American fall under the American aegis. They have forces positioned in harms way to ensure they will have to be drawn into any such conflict.
And Australia has literally just joined Aukus. Rather explicitly bringing it into a nuclear technology alliance. With both UK and US nuclear armed subs to have berths there.
It's not productive to boil military discussions down to that reductive question, because it's basically just 'I think nothing bad will happen if we have no military, I think something bad will happen, we have no way to test this so we're just arguing'.
Except history repeatedly has tested it.
Pacifism doesn't work. Your a milatary power or you subsume yourself to one.
By the standards of history. The modern powers of the UK then American, whom most weak power were subsumed to explicitly or implicitly, have been pretty benevolent.
This historically has not been the case. One need only look to the soviet states to see what that can look like.
I agree, I was just making the point that it's useless to throw out 'we could probably get by without an army' when we are never going to test that in practice
We've enjoyed an unnaturally long period of peace since WW2. There are still existential threats to Europe. Russia being the most obvious.
If every country just stopped building up their armed forces, there would be no protection at all, making it more likely for history to repeat itself.
The forces are threadbare. Russia is gearing up for bigger things on the continent.
If we all end up conscripted and shipped off to fight a war on the continent, which isn't as ridiculous as I'd like it to be, we'll all be wishing we were better equipped and had spent more money while we had the chance.
I don't even think that's an alarmist thing to say at this point unfortunately.
This is complete horseshit.
Pakistan and North Korea have Nuclear weapons.
Do you think people in Ireland, Germany, or the Netherlands for example are suffering because of their lack of spending on nuclear deterrents?
Germany and the Netherlands directly fall under a nuclear umbrella. Ireland is basically protected by the UK. They have ceded responsibility of their airspace and maritime zone.
Ireland doesn’t really have a military so they are different, but Germany and the Netherlands are signed up to the NATO weapon sharing agreement, which basically means they have the situation the UK is often accused of- Nukes, but only if the US let’s them, while they have to buy US aircraft to have them (see why Germany has ended up ordering F35) and are just as much a target.
>Do you think people in Ireland, Germany, or the Netherlands for example are suffering because of their lack of spending on nuclear deterrents?
They're NATO freeloaders, but in a group of freeloaders, someone needs to actually be paying. So what the UK and US need to do is force them to pay up, not also try and freeload themselves.
Germany has been talking about contributions to both the UK and France to explicitly and formally permanently extend the guarantee of nuclear defence over Europe.
Edit: source
https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/15/german-minister-calls-for-british-and-french-nuclear-weapons-to-protect-europe
I don't find your trolling around the edge of the conversation, instead of just... having a conversation, very interesting, I'm sorry. I said that the UK should make NATO freeloaders pay more, not use them as an example. If you don't have any response, let's call it a day.
Err because of NATO which trump will definitely split up and ever increase the danger of Putin.
This shit has happened before my friend. Except in WW2 they didnt have nukes. WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones again thats why there shouldnt be antagonists and active malicious world leaders to worry about when they can press a button and annhilate you.
I have but a few requests. Please stop making the nuclear budget come out of the MOD budget it eats an ever increasing amount of the budget forcing cuts in other parts of the military as reducing nuclear capabilities is a no go. The real defence budget currently when you exclude nuclear weapons is 1.7% which is pitiful.
2.5% is a good step forward but the MOD really needs a big injection of cash (like ~£100 billion like the Germans are doing) on top of a yearly budget increase to make up for the decades of neglect. Plus MOD procurement needs a full restructuring.
> Plus MOD procurement needs a full restructuring
All of our public procurement is dire, but the MoD might take the cake as the absolute worst. It's so bad.
It seems like every two or three years the MoD comes out with reports of a funding black hole. Too many projects are basically living in a budgetary fantasy land.
The Integrated Procurement Strategy is meant to fix that, avoiding conflicting projects stretching the budget too thin so that none of them are achievable. Unfortunately realising it will take two miracles: 1) leaders who are able to say "no" to projects that aren't a priority, and 2) honest cost estimates from industry and defence programme offices.
The integrated strategy doesn’t have a hope of succeeding. The main issues facing the services are a combination of industry giving lowball estimates to subvert the selection process and long screwdriver syndrome from top brass and service chiefs, conflicting projects are a very minor issue compared to these
Agreed, meanwhile it moves acquisition further away from the operators and deeper into bureaucratic teams of project managers and commercial officers. They really learned nothing from Programme Nelson.
For me the problem was framed wrong. James Cartlidge set out a paper asking the question "How do we fix DE&S?" Rather than focusing on actually delivering capability to our armed forces.
Unfortunately, as long as everything remains classified, there isn't much we can do to hold MoD accountable.
I'm not sure how we would be able to make enough information about our military public to hold the spenders accountable without compromising ourselves by revealing what we're doing.
It’s been well known for many years that the MOD is the worst run and most inefficient of all government departments but they’ve stubbornly resisted attempts to reform and languished from lack of interest among the government
I have had to do work with the MOD in various formats everybody I have spoken to working on building projects has individual stories of millions of pounds of wasteage when collated, it results in billions, to the point of barracks being fully modernised and upgraded then closed shortly after.
I would also like to see us reduce funding the likes of BAe and others as these are private companies, I know there is some symbiotic relationship, but they're profiting directly from the taxpayer
Where else would it come from?
Also i think the issue with giving it more cash is the mod has been known before to be terrible at spending its money. So hopefully Labour manage to sort that out so money can be given with confidence that it will be spent well. You might have brought that up in terms of procurement but that needs to be one of the first things sorted. The Treasury will always be hesitant to give money to a department that isnt spending it properly
The Americans have a funny trick where everything nuclear — from power plants to (generators for) submarines to bombs — falls under the Department of Energy. If we’re going ahead with a state-run energy company there could be scope to do the same here, particularly if we want to have the capability to build nuclear power plants “in-house”.
American nuclear weapons are funded by the department of energy? And that's separate from the 800 billion or whatever they already spend on defense? Bloody hell lol.
It is a good idea though.
Just the warheads/generators and maintenance/R&D/production thereof, but yes. The actual missiles/ships carrying the warheads/generators are still paid for out of the normal military budget to my understanding. That would likely still be impactful given Britain’s much smaller military though, especially as I imagine the fixed costs of having nuclear weapons and equipment are non-trivial.
Don’t act so surprised about the spending! The military budget is just for conquering the world. Of course we have an entirely separate one for ending it. The nuke budget is “only” set at $25 billion for next year. That’s still half the DoE’s budget mind.
The fixed costs of having nukes are pretty high. I imagine the uks costs are still going to be around $20 billion also. It probably costs around 20% - 30% of the entire uk military budget I'd imagine. Just maintenance is really expensive.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8166/
Apparently we spend £3 billion for servicing and such, which account for 6% of the MoD’s spending. I think that’s just warheads. The four new subs Starmer’s referring to are estimated to cost £31-£41 billion for R&D and production. That’s currently planned to come out of the MoD’s core equipment budget which I imagine is supposed to cover everything from bullets to jets.
Building new subs is obviously no small task, and the expenditure would obviously take place over a decade at least. But it’s still surprising to me that something which is relatively so fundamental, designing and building a single new ship class, would take up a further 6% of the MoD’s yearly budget (assuming £31 billion over 10 years)! Really puts how small the UK military is compared to places like America and China into perspective.
Yeah.. well... we are a pretty small country lol... and our economy isn't well managed bluntly.. public spending is super high, and even though we have way higher taxes but still have a funding black hole.. our systems are centuries old so I guess reform is just really hard. Eh.. awkward situation.
China's just an anomalie because they flat out lie about gdp and financial statistics. It's literally a house of cards.
That was more a courtesy to make selling Pollaris to us palatable to the Kennedy administration after they fucked us over with Skybolt.
*Technically*, the UK nuclear arsenal is at NATO's disposal, rather than the UK's, 'except in cases of supreme national interest'.
Why does MOD procurement need restructuring? I have family that works in the MOD and talked to them extensively about this topic, never really heard any serious complaints. Just can be a bit long winded but that’s needed to ensure a proper and fair tender process.
MOD procurement has had several major programmes go way over budget and under deliver in the last few decades.
Think the Ajax programme, the STR 2 and f111 procurement or lack there of. It's had a few ok programmes like Archer but they're few and far between.
How?
HOW!?
How have the tories let even defence be stolen out from under them.
They've literally let labour nick every last thing they used to be known for being strong on.
My only comment is I think it should be more than 2.5%. Or both pensions and the nuclear deterrent should be spun off to a seperate budget.
Because the world is an increasingly dangerous place. And not only are we as a island explicitly dependant on stable international trade for pur day to day lives. As a weathy nation with both the means to help and a history of providing stability in some areas with our commonwealth partners, we have an obligation to continue to do so.
Ultimately peace beings far more prosperity than any amount of aid. And we ate in a position to help ensure that peace.
Because Russia and China and Iran are explicitly gearing up for wars and are targeting the West and our Allies. I'd rather spend too much on Defence and nothing happen than spend too little on Defence and end up losing a war
All that money is going on pensions/triple lock - since May got battered for trying to slightly tone down the triple lock, subsequent Tories have gone all in on the boomer bribe policy and that money has to be found somewhere else.
While I don't oppose this, the phrase 'as long as it is achievable within Labour's borrowing rules' makes it seem like it won't happen. Unless Labour stop claiming they can fund everything without tax increases, I'm not sure they will actually be able to fund anything.
There's also the other side of this being 'This is what they choose to fund over ALL of the other things they promised and reneged on due to funding rules?'
Good.
With Trump potentially headed for the White House, and Russia showing repeatedly they don’t give a fuck about prior treaties, we need a government who are willing to maintain our defences.
Please don’t attack us and giving away Kent to placate an invader doesn’t cut it.
Good. I'd prefer to see defence spending raised higher still, but Labour committing itself to the same benchmark it did when it was last in power is a very welcome move now we're about to win power again.
Yeah I saw that in the news a few weeks back. Very bizarre. I hope they actually know how to program the coordinates correctly and not send them to London.
Not sure where a Labour Govt would sit with aiding Ukraine but that international aid is very necessary if Ukraine are going to continue to repulse Russia.
Russia winning would be a blow to democracy and the UK should continue to lend support to Ukraine to prevent this.
That… that’s already the plan lol
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has said “our spending will rise to 2.5% as soon as economic conditions allow”
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/09/ministers-call-for-much-greater-pace-of-uk-defence-investment
Yeah, except given the state of the Tories at the moment a committent to something is virtually a guarantee that it *won't* happen, whereas Labour are at least untested!
Yeah but the difference is, the Tories have had over 10 years to sort defence out. So far, they have only cut spending, cut procurement, drastically reduced naval assets, caused issues in training through privatisation, helped cause a recruitment crisis and much more.
Jeremy hunt can say what he wants. The fact remains: defence was better under Labour.
See I like this, those cuts were a response to the gfc no? I’m told that wasn’t govt’s fault yet I look at the response in 2009 and particularly the 2010 budget (bare in mind departments need to plan so budgets set funding for the future also)
So what are we saying about that, did the tories not reverse Labour’s cuts soon enough? Should they have maintained defence spending and made further cuts elsewhere?
And let’s go down that further was the recession, the state of the economy in 2010 Labour’s fault?
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis
“The simple fact is that all of these countries went into the disaster-zone in 2008 because when the global financial crisis hurricane hit, they had high government debt and high budget deficits, which made them extremely vulnerable to adverse shocks. Had any one of these countries’ governments faced the crisis with zero government debt and consistent budget surpluses, they would have been considered pillars of strength rather than sources of weakness. What those European countries wanted for, in other words, was Australian treasurer Peter Costello running their budgets in the long lead-up to 2008.”
It’s funny, high debt and budget deficits weren’t what Labour inherited was it?
Note the change in discourse, 2010 it was who’d clear the deficit fastest, who’d make the ‘hard choices’, now it’s increasing spending while cutting taxes
I guess we’re not crediting the government with the ability to even talk about raising the defence budget 5% over the nato target? Because you certainly couldn’t do that in 2010 could you?
No, I'm not crediting the government. All they managed to do is reduce the deficit to what it was before the financial crisis. Look at any graph of budget deficits over the years and you can see for yourself. All those funding cuts basically achieved nothing.
The reason why the deficit was so much higher than normal during those years before the Tories took power is because of bailouts. The UK government spent almost £500 billion from 2008 to bailout the banks. That action was supported by the Tories, and then weaponised against labour. The £400-whatever billion spent over those years is equivalent to over 1/3 of the entire budget in 2023. The financial situation would have been the exact same under the conservatives and would have been inherited by labour if parties were reversed. That's the giant elephant in the room which Tories seem to miss.
Couple the above with a recession and you have the reason for the huge budget deficit. The whole excuse for austerity ("Labour being irresponsible") was always a lie.
Also, the reason why the narrative has changed is partly because austerity has been shown as a failure. Those spending reductions actually reduced tax receipts and did not lead to the promised budget surpluses. The budget deficit stayed the same as what it was for most of labours premiership. Except now, we have more potholes, less public services, less police, a much smaller army, smaller air force, smaller navy, a struggling court system and *much* more. The Tories weren't forced to do what they did. Many economists at the time said that too, and continue to say it now.
The only thing I'm "crediting" this government for is running this country into the ground instead of saving the economy. Look around you, see what we've lost, and then try and work out what we have actually gained from all these years of Tory rule. The answer, of course, is *nothing* .
There is a good chance the Tories wouldn’t actually be in power at the point they would consider “economic conditions allow” so you couldn’t really say it was the plan. It’s good for Starmer to confirm it would still happen under Labour in that case
True but he’s copying their spending plans too lol
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-more-tax-and-spend-labours-fiscal-plans-revealed-f7x7f5n5s (non-paywall https://archive.is/NFRaA)
Literally a vote for the status quo vs the status quo
It's ridiculous really because it's obvious that in the coming 10-15 years someone, whatever party is in control, will have to tax and spend. This next parliament is probably the last one in our lifetime where the party in control can probably just cruise along with their fingers in their ears for the most part.
We need infrastructure, we need to update our defence, we need to care for our ever ageing population whilst tackling a cost of living crisis that is forcing young people to reevaluate having children themselves. And then there's the climate crisis.
All these things are going to have to be sorted out by one party or other and done not according to party principles but for the actual good of the country.
I agree with everything that you said there! Investment is sorely needed. My point is that if a party was to do that, large portions of the media would do everything they could to prevent it. The foreign interests and billionaires that own the media have a massive vested interest in a poor, and poorly educated population in the UK. They are far easier to manipulate with the specious arguments put forth by their bought and paid for party - the Conservatives.
Well it would be absolutely wonderful if we could pay for everything with a growing economy instead of taxes. Yet economies are always growing and then shrinking again. I have seemingly lived through about four "once in a lifetime recessions". The idea that we'll have enough growth in the next 10+ years to pay for all the spending that will need to be done is fantasy at the moment. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
I agree that people here are getting over-excited but it’s still a big statement from a labour leader, which until recently had a lifelong supporter of nuclear disarmament leading them.
That's not how it works, you can't claim future Tory plans are 'already the plan' then act like Starmer is repeating something when he lays out his future plan.
They're in competition, one of those plans won't happen.
I think we all know ‘as soon as economic conditions allow’ is code for ‘we don’t want to do it but we can’t afford to publicly walk back another policy’
Housing crisis is due to planning restrictions which don't even need money to fix. Just need to allow the houses to be built. Labour are promising to fix this but we'll see how they get on, people go fucking mental when anyone wants to build anything near them.
You can say that about literally... everything.
The point is that Starmer has back tracked constantly on everything with the argument "we can't afford that". Now with the military, there's suddenly money. Seems fucking disingenuous.
The economy doesn't need money to fix it.
No 2 billion program is going to materially affect a 3.3 trillion machine. 2 billion is an accounting error.
The economy needs legislative reform. Which fortunately is free. Unfortunately, it requires vision and planning.
That was the previous guy. Luckily the current guy actually lives in the real world and has done a pretty good job of distancing Labour for the previous people in charge.
Ah yeah. He was a straight up commie. Thank fuck he wasn't the prime minister when Russia invaded Ukraine or he'd probably be sending arms to Russia instead.
To be fair, I always tactically voted for the tories because I absolutely hate the fanatic core of Labour. But that being said, I've never had a problem with starmer. He seems pretty grounded. IF we're gonna have a labour leader (which i suspect we soon might) he's probably as good as any for the job.
I'm the same.
Labour powerful fringe groups are the single biggest thing stopping me ever voting Labour.
I'm painfully aware that because of how Labour is structured, its possible for a back bench coup to make the PM a powerless puppet to the ever radical NEC. In a way that's just not possible under the tories.
I live in fear of those dangerous idiots actually gaining control.
We already are.
We are one of only a few true blue water navies, the second best in the world, operating two carriers that are fully expecting to be bases for deployment of coalition aircraft. We maintain a continuous at sea nuclear deterrent, constant freedom of navigation (read shipping) patrols around the globe and maintain a small but top tier expeditionary force in the royal marines.
Our air force is small and doctrinally linked to the navies requirements (f35b for all) and the army is even smaller, maintaining the smallest unit size to ensure we don't lose knowledge on a particular branch of warfare incase we need to scale up massively (ie ww3) and don't want to have to start from scratch.
For all that, we do need more boats, so that we can actually deploy a carrier independently, and fill it full of our own planes. And it would be lovely if our service members went living in squalor on base.
Our navy is good, but I'd place it behind China and probably South Korea and Japan, which have bigger fleets and didn't make stupid decisions like retiring their only anti-ship missiles without replacement (ok I know we grudgingly reversed that but still).
Those three nations mostly aim to use their navies in and around their backyards. We aim to use our navy across the globe. A lot of our tonnage is in the support ships required to do that. So is it better or worse? Well it depends what your goals are.
China/Korea/Japan are all green water navies though. They aren't built for sustained operations around the globe. China wants to pretend it's a blue water navy, but it absolutely does not have the capability or the experience.
The MoD can be stunningly.incompetent and idiotic though, no arguments there haha.
It absolutely is possible and a 3.3 trillion economy absolutely can afford it.
It's whether we're willing to priorities that over handouts and healthcare.
For perspective the spring budget increased pensions by 8.5% under the triple lock. This is about £10.8 billion.
The UK military budget is £68 billion. Including both the nuclear deterrent and pensions. So *just last springs pension increase* represents a 16% possible increase in military spending.
I see your point and dislike the cap, but no point removing it if those children grow up in a war-torn wasteland. We need a deterrent. God, look what Putin was happy to do even with one - he killed British citizens on British soil. He’s on manoeuvres and the Baltics are right to be worried. We need a deterrent.
Ah yes, the magic of efficiency savings.
So how are Labour going to make those magic savings when they can't sack the Civil Servants who balls up the procurement in the first place?
Never mind nuclear deterrent we need to boost our interception capabilities. A bit look football, make sure you have a reliable defence before you shell out on a fancy expensive striker. It’s not hard Keir
it's not at all like football. it's a nuclear deterrence, the idea is that the other guy is so afraid of being hit by your stick he doesn't attempt to hit you with his stick.
what you are suggesting is a Mexican stand off with no pistol and a helmet instead
Snapshot of _Starmer: Labour will increase defence spending to 2.5% and boost nuclear deterrent_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/starmer-labour-will-increase-defence-spending-to-2-5-and-boost-nuclear-deterrent-3002947) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/starmer-labour-will-increase-defence-spending-to-2-5-and-boost-nuclear-deterrent-3002947) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
“And we will also tackle this business of waste because there’s £15bn worth of waste in the system in procurement and other projects and we cannot allow that to happen.” Big if true, fixing procurement so things like the Ajax debacle don’t happen again should mean cash injection can go back into the right places, £15bn is a massive portion of the overall defence budget
Short of completely changing the tender process, this is far more difficult then it at first appears. Projects regularly go massively over budget and sunk cost fallacies sink in.
The unpopular but easiest thing to do would be to buy off the shelf stuff that already works but insist on licensing the manufacturing to be done here (like the yanks do for most foreign military gear).
The main problem with our procurement process imo is the top brass changing their minds and penny pinching. We have a habit of not looking far enough forward so during a contract that might take say 5 years we change the requirements which increases the price that plus trying to save money by not fitting out say a very expensive war ship with a certain capability then having to retrofit it years later for double the cost. It's maddening.
>is the top brass changing their minds https://youtu.be/aXQ2lO3ieBA?si=BNyDGxiRdW8lO8_j
Ah man I was meant to have a 2 minute reddit between tasks but watched that whole thing, that was fantastic.
While this is funny, don't forget to watch [Lazerpig's video as well](https://youtu.be/2gOGHdZDmEk)
Haha perfect.
There's a very real argument that the builder deliberately sabotaged the ability to retrofit electric catapults in a cost effective manner, despite it being part of the design brief. The same builder who would lose an awful lot of money if the UK government had just bought a couple of wings of F/A-18s.
Isn't that a little mad? I mean let's say we did actually go to war. Not just an excuse to bomb a random country half a world away, surely if procurement is so complicated then such military hardware is useless in times of actual conflict. What can we build en masse in the UK?
The trouble with off the shelf is it has no advantage over the enemy. If I buy the same F16 models the Saudi airforce have it becomes a battle of numbers and the UK military looses it's edge.
Not really, tactics, logistics, strategy and training are all factors as well. There's more to military capability than numbers and hardware.
That is undoubtedly true. Britain's recent conflicts have been with opposition forces over whom they have had substantial military equipment advantages. There is no doubt that having better fighter jets will win you air supremacy quicker and with less losses (although pilot capability obviously plays a big part) just look how many planes UK has lost in combat despite being in conflicts in bosnia/iraq/Afghanistan
Completely, everyone wants to fix procurement but no one knows how really, it’s insanely complicated. Often tenders are a race to the bottom and bidders know that they won’t be able to deliver for the agreed price, but also know the Government won’t be able to take a bath on the initial outlay politically.
I mean that smacks of the ususal "efficiency savings", which is what every government blue or red talks about. Fixing procurement would mean being absolutely brutal politically, especially when it came to domestic production. The New Medium Helicopter is a good example. The Black Hawk is the obvious choice given it's a proven design, but Leonardo are leaning heavily on their existing UK production (rather than a good track record with their offering). There will be enormous pressure to go with them just because they have a larger UK footprint. Also I would argue that you can't fix procurement without more money. A big reason it's inefficient is because money is drip-fed and projects remain underfunded for years. Much like how you can't increase NHS efficiency without the capital spend to improve infrastructure and resources, e.g. IT. Or going with seemingly cheaper options that end up being a disaster - see Nimrod MRA4 where someone thought we could just bolt on new wings to existing airframes.
If I'm not mistaken, going with blackhawk would mean, effectively, an end to helicopter production in the UK. Restarting that at some point in the future would be extraordinarily difficult, not to mention extraordinarily expensive. Does that justify the risk of going with Leonardo?
No, it doesn't justify the risk of going with Leonardo. Helicopters are something we can source fairly easily from abroad. Whereas Yeovil aren't exactly pumping out dozens of brand new helicopters every year for non-UK customers. They're constantly used as a stick to beat the MOD with - "we'll have to close if you don't give us that new contract". If Leonardo can't keep UK production without being awarded NMH then it's not worth it. Also Sikorsky has said they'll have at least some UK part production and possibly a final assembly line in the UK. So it's not like some money wouldn't go back into the economy. If the new Labour government give NMH to Leonardo you can bet it will be just more empty rhetoric on reform, with them putting politics rather than defence first.
If I'm honest I don't think it has anything to do with money going into the economy in the short term with this contract. I think the prospect of losing the ability to manufacture helicopters in country should be seen as a national security risk truthfully. At current, and for the forseable future, helicopters form a core part of our armed forces, for all 3 branches, without which we would be fucked. I can't think of a future where a lack of clandestine ability to support the future of these platforms doesn't constitute a threat to our security. Yes we will practically always (as do most countries), be going into projects with other countries, but I would not like to see a future where we are wholly dependant on other countries for this capability. For the record, I do agree that blackhawk, at a glance, makes more sense with being an established, well proven platform.
Helicopters are way down the priority list for domestic production. If we need to be able to build helicopters we need to be able to build everything else - tanks, drones, missiles, small arms, etc. If Labour wants to pump in money just to keep Yeovil it can, but it needs to be additional money. If there's not going to be more cash then it will need to reduce risk by going with proven designs even if UK plants have to close. Plus Leonardo focus on small and medium lift. They don't do large helos or attack helos.
>Helicopters are way down the priority list for domestic production. If we need to be able to build helicopters we need to be able to build everything else - tanks, drones, missiles, small arms, etc Thats the thing, we can. We have the capability yo build just about everything our military needs. From syringes for army medics to drones for recon missions to fast jets for whatever you need them for, we CAN build them ourselves. > Plus Leonardo focus on small and medium lift. They don't do large helos or attack helos. I'm not sure what point you're making there, we're on about a medium helicopter program. >If Labour wants to pump in money just to keep Yeovil it can, but it needs to be additional money. If there's not going to be more cash then it will need to reduce risk by going with proven designs even if UK plants have to close. The AW149 is an existing proven design, its not as widespread in use as the blackhawk, but it is In service with other users. I'm also not sure if you're implying that choosing the AW149 is a risky choice? Leonardo are an experienced aircraft manufacturer with many years of experience. The idea that there's a high degree of risk associated with choosing it over the Blackhawk is a bit disingenuous (if this wasn't your point I do apologise as I have clearly misinterpreted your point)
First, you're conflating theoretical industrial capability in the future with the situation now. We don't have, for example, a sovereign modern tank design or UK companies manufacturing tanks. We're heavily reliant on foreign companies to make Challenger 3 a reality, and the only reason it's happening is because we already have the Challenger 2 as a basis to do the work. Yes, we could build anything in the UK. But without tens of billions of extra money to set up production lines and make new designs it won't happen. Labour are specifically refusing to give extra funding until it's convenient. They're putting all their hopes on "procurement reform". Buying more expensive, domestic hardware isn't reforming procurement, it's the status quo. Having UK assembly lines for products designed by foreign companies outside the UK that use key parts made outside the UK doesn't give us a sovereign defence capability. Second, it was you that said we needed to be able to build everything in the UK. So we need attack helicopters and heavy lift made here too by your logic. Third, the fact the AW149 is theoretically in service overseas means nothing. Neither the Egyptian nor Thai militaries are known for their rigorous military testing and deployments. Their birds may be fine for military parades, but do we know this will work in harsh environments during combat? Even the Poles can't be trusted 100% to show everything is fine. They're not known for going all over the world to test their capabilities. Have they tried flying them in Scandanavia during winter? Have they tried low-level night ops yet? Have they been to hot and humid countries with them? *Have they received sufficient numbers to do any testing at all?* This sort of stuff is really important. We've had to spend large sums of money sorting out the Type 45 destroyer propulsion systems because no one knew their top of the line engines would struggle in warm waters. If it turns out that the AW149 doesn't work properly in certain conditions, it's likely the MOD will have to pay to sort it out. There is no way Leonardo would agree to a contract that means they'd suck up all the costs of any rectification work that wasn't down to negligence or faulty assembly. As I said, they use UK production as a stick to beat us with. A handful of customers doesn't mean the AW149 is a proven system. **More importantly, if it's not the best candidate we shouldn't buy it just because it's local.** That's how we got into the mess with Challenger 2. The Army review board wanted Abrams or Leo2, but we went with Challenger 2 (despite being slow and having a rifled barrel that wasn't compatible with NATO partners) "because Vickers". Vickers closed down anyway when we couldn't sell the Challenger 2 in significant numbers. If Yeovil can't survive without UK orders, at some point it will fail anyway.
But how's an honest John meant to make a quick buck if they have to deliver on a contract.
There’s too much waste in every state run entity. Defence procurement has been shocking for decades
Jokes about why anyone would want to visit Barrow aside, I’m genuinely shocked Starmer is the first Labour leader in three decades to visit. That means the last time was either pre PM Blair or John Smith. I’m not surprised Corbyn didn’t, but shocked no one else did, especially as it’s both a key piece of defense infrastructure (good photo ops!)!and typically a Labour seat that has gotten less safe over time (went Tory in 2019, but Labour only just held it in 2015)
Blair’s Labour had a massive spat with the CND so it’s no surprise he didn’t visit as leader, it’s one of the reasons Blair’s Labour didn’t allow any nuclear plants to be built in the 2000’s
Views from Barrow's train station are something else. Coach loads of Navy personnel coming in and out at all hours though. If you're not passing through ymmv.
>He is announcing a new “triple lock” commitment, promising that a Labour government after the next election would build at least four new nuclear submarines at Barrow, keep the continuous at-sea deterrent and fund any future upgrades needed to the fleet. Good god, yes. Brilliant framing, too. >“It is the foremost protection that we have because, as the name suggests, it is the deterrence against the highest form of threat that our country could face. So that’s why we commit to it." Absolute breath of fresh air to have a leader again *who actually gets it*.
A leader who actually cares about being proactive. Someone who wants to engage with our defence industry to enhance our deterrents. It’s been so long since we had a leader like that.
I was looking at our defense spending over the last 20 years. Its really interesting to see it was pretty much about 2.5% during new Labour and sub 2% during tory power, aside from the last year or 2 when it just scrapes 2%
The Tory figures were also heavily massaged. They decided that they should start including service pensions, and the budget for the intelligence services, which all inflate the figures. They also decided that the MoD had to fully fund the nuclear deterrent rather than coming from a separate fund. These masked massive real-terms cuts - the army was almost a third bigger when the Tories took over in government.
And I'm sure those four shiny new submarines totally won't be built by a French-Chinese conglomerate, because we don't have the nounce to build a fucking barbeque anymore.
Is that why we're building the Australian ones instead of the French?
Woah woah. It's Reddit we need to jump on the British hate bandwagon. Bloody submarines we can't build keep on subject.
They are currently being built by BAE in Barrow-in-Furness. Government industrial policy for ages is that warships are built in the UK in order to maintain our shipbuilding skills
What are you talking about? We're building an Astute class submarine, one of the best in the world by the way, right now. There is currently a skills shortage but we definitely still have the expertise.
We manufacture a lot actually. We're the 7th or 8th biggest in the world.
On what planet are you on? Of course we do
We're actually pretty good at boats in general. Just slow.
Neither France nor China has the capability to build submarines even close to the quality of British Hunter-killers. The only countries that can are America and Russia.
The great thing is, as a PM, you can say this publicly. And privately you can say in the secret letters of last resort "Nuclear War is a fools game. Do not retaliate and add to the sum of human misery on Earth". You can literally do both.
Or, "Go for the French. Remember Waterloo!"
My my !!
How can I resist you?
I would hope every PM letter says to find allies and get some information before we start nuking
Except Boris, not sure he could've written those long words with crayons.
BOOM BOOM and a drawing of Basil Brush.
So just throwing money down the toilet?
A deterrent that has been ignored, is no longer a deterrent. At that point, your argument is "kill these civilians because I payed good money for those nukes"
In the event that the UK has already been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust I'm not sure that "getting your money's worth" from the nuclear arsenal is worth worrying about. If the nuclear deterrent has failed to deter then the money has already been flushed down the toilet.
Our deterrent is a fleet-in-being by definition. It exists to never be used.
>Absolute breath of fresh air to have a leader again *who actually gets it*. It's amazing how relieving a politician with a good chance of winning and actual competence is.
It's baffling how people don't get that nuclear weapons are what make you a UK instead of a Ukraine. Also, you get privileged middle class people ranting about the waste of military expense, while living a safe, comfortable lifestyle defended by that military expense.
I mean, because its entirely not true. Japan, Korea, Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia aren't nuclear powers but they're definitely not Ukraines either. Not that I'm advocating for getting rid of the nukes, but it's a stupid point to make. Ukraine is kind of u unique in that it has shit geography, and is exceptionally poor. Its entire pre war GDP even in PPP terms is less than London..
But all are protected by a nuclear umbrella of one form or another, and even then Germany and Italy have nuclear weapons forward deployed to their air forces, and Japan maintains stockpiles of enriched fuel and the technical capabilities to build a weapon in extremis.
All implicitly or explicitly fall under the nuclear aegis of of a nuclear armed state. Germany, Spain and Italy are in NATO. And explicitly fall under the defence of 3 nuclear powers. Japan and S.Korea through their military alliance with American fall under the American aegis. They have forces positioned in harms way to ensure they will have to be drawn into any such conflict. And Australia has literally just joined Aukus. Rather explicitly bringing it into a nuclear technology alliance. With both UK and US nuclear armed subs to have berths there.
As opposed to the UK, which isn't in NATO?
All of those countries have nestled themselves under the umbrella of nuclear nations, and are basically freeloading.
Geography is what makes us UK instead of Ukraine. Who is ever threatening to invade?
Everyone. But it was a while ago.
A core part of our national story is the series of successful and unsuccessful maritime invasions.
It's not productive to boil military discussions down to that reductive question, because it's basically just 'I think nothing bad will happen if we have no military, I think something bad will happen, we have no way to test this so we're just arguing'.
Except history repeatedly has tested it. Pacifism doesn't work. Your a milatary power or you subsume yourself to one. By the standards of history. The modern powers of the UK then American, whom most weak power were subsumed to explicitly or implicitly, have been pretty benevolent. This historically has not been the case. One need only look to the soviet states to see what that can look like.
I agree, I was just making the point that it's useless to throw out 'we could probably get by without an army' when we are never going to test that in practice
We've enjoyed an unnaturally long period of peace since WW2. There are still existential threats to Europe. Russia being the most obvious. If every country just stopped building up their armed forces, there would be no protection at all, making it more likely for history to repeat itself.
Agreed we can't all down tools, but doesn't mean we need to increase spending
The forces are threadbare. Russia is gearing up for bigger things on the continent. If we all end up conscripted and shipped off to fight a war on the continent, which isn't as ridiculous as I'd like it to be, we'll all be wishing we were better equipped and had spent more money while we had the chance. I don't even think that's an alarmist thing to say at this point unfortunately.
This is complete horseshit. Pakistan and North Korea have Nuclear weapons. Do you think people in Ireland, Germany, or the Netherlands for example are suffering because of their lack of spending on nuclear deterrents?
Germany and the Netherlands directly fall under a nuclear umbrella. Ireland is basically protected by the UK. They have ceded responsibility of their airspace and maritime zone.
Ireland doesn’t really have a military so they are different, but Germany and the Netherlands are signed up to the NATO weapon sharing agreement, which basically means they have the situation the UK is often accused of- Nukes, but only if the US let’s them, while they have to buy US aircraft to have them (see why Germany has ended up ordering F35) and are just as much a target.
>Do you think people in Ireland, Germany, or the Netherlands for example are suffering because of their lack of spending on nuclear deterrents? They're NATO freeloaders, but in a group of freeloaders, someone needs to actually be paying. So what the UK and US need to do is force them to pay up, not also try and freeload themselves.
Germany has been talking about contributions to both the UK and France to explicitly and formally permanently extend the guarantee of nuclear defence over Europe. Edit: source https://www.euronews.com/2024/02/15/german-minister-calls-for-british-and-french-nuclear-weapons-to-protect-europe
Ireland is not in NATO, not sure how you "force" them to "pay up". Are you suggesting an invasion of Ireland? Lol
Last time we did that, it wasn’t *super* popular with the Irish.
Aye I think I might have heard something about that
Heard there were some troubles with that
Use your deductive reasoning to figure out which of those countries were being referred to.
I used my deductive reasoning to ascertain that you'd forgotten Irish neutrality 🤷
I don't find your trolling around the edge of the conversation, instead of just... having a conversation, very interesting, I'm sorry. I said that the UK should make NATO freeloaders pay more, not use them as an example. If you don't have any response, let's call it a day.
Err because of NATO which trump will definitely split up and ever increase the danger of Putin. This shit has happened before my friend. Except in WW2 they didnt have nukes. WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones again thats why there shouldnt be antagonists and active malicious world leaders to worry about when they can press a button and annhilate you.
Isn't it nice to feel like an adult is back in the room again.
How will he pay for it? Otherwise this is just an empty pledge.
I have but a few requests. Please stop making the nuclear budget come out of the MOD budget it eats an ever increasing amount of the budget forcing cuts in other parts of the military as reducing nuclear capabilities is a no go. The real defence budget currently when you exclude nuclear weapons is 1.7% which is pitiful. 2.5% is a good step forward but the MOD really needs a big injection of cash (like ~£100 billion like the Germans are doing) on top of a yearly budget increase to make up for the decades of neglect. Plus MOD procurement needs a full restructuring.
> Plus MOD procurement needs a full restructuring All of our public procurement is dire, but the MoD might take the cake as the absolute worst. It's so bad.
It seems like every two or three years the MoD comes out with reports of a funding black hole. Too many projects are basically living in a budgetary fantasy land.
The Integrated Procurement Strategy is meant to fix that, avoiding conflicting projects stretching the budget too thin so that none of them are achievable. Unfortunately realising it will take two miracles: 1) leaders who are able to say "no" to projects that aren't a priority, and 2) honest cost estimates from industry and defence programme offices.
The integrated strategy doesn’t have a hope of succeeding. The main issues facing the services are a combination of industry giving lowball estimates to subvert the selection process and long screwdriver syndrome from top brass and service chiefs, conflicting projects are a very minor issue compared to these
Agreed, meanwhile it moves acquisition further away from the operators and deeper into bureaucratic teams of project managers and commercial officers. They really learned nothing from Programme Nelson. For me the problem was framed wrong. James Cartlidge set out a paper asking the question "How do we fix DE&S?" Rather than focusing on actually delivering capability to our armed forces.
Agree 100% in my opinion the entire process and team needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch. Wipe the slate clean and start again.
Unfortunately, as long as everything remains classified, there isn't much we can do to hold MoD accountable. I'm not sure how we would be able to make enough information about our military public to hold the spenders accountable without compromising ourselves by revealing what we're doing.
It’s been well known for many years that the MOD is the worst run and most inefficient of all government departments but they’ve stubbornly resisted attempts to reform and languished from lack of interest among the government
I have had to do work with the MOD in various formats everybody I have spoken to working on building projects has individual stories of millions of pounds of wasteage when collated, it results in billions, to the point of barracks being fully modernised and upgraded then closed shortly after. I would also like to see us reduce funding the likes of BAe and others as these are private companies, I know there is some symbiotic relationship, but they're profiting directly from the taxpayer
Where else would it come from? Also i think the issue with giving it more cash is the mod has been known before to be terrible at spending its money. So hopefully Labour manage to sort that out so money can be given with confidence that it will be spent well. You might have brought that up in terms of procurement but that needs to be one of the first things sorted. The Treasury will always be hesitant to give money to a department that isnt spending it properly
The Americans have a funny trick where everything nuclear — from power plants to (generators for) submarines to bombs — falls under the Department of Energy. If we’re going ahead with a state-run energy company there could be scope to do the same here, particularly if we want to have the capability to build nuclear power plants “in-house”.
American nuclear weapons are funded by the department of energy? And that's separate from the 800 billion or whatever they already spend on defense? Bloody hell lol. It is a good idea though.
Just the warheads/generators and maintenance/R&D/production thereof, but yes. The actual missiles/ships carrying the warheads/generators are still paid for out of the normal military budget to my understanding. That would likely still be impactful given Britain’s much smaller military though, especially as I imagine the fixed costs of having nuclear weapons and equipment are non-trivial. Don’t act so surprised about the spending! The military budget is just for conquering the world. Of course we have an entirely separate one for ending it. The nuke budget is “only” set at $25 billion for next year. That’s still half the DoE’s budget mind.
The fixed costs of having nukes are pretty high. I imagine the uks costs are still going to be around $20 billion also. It probably costs around 20% - 30% of the entire uk military budget I'd imagine. Just maintenance is really expensive.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8166/ Apparently we spend £3 billion for servicing and such, which account for 6% of the MoD’s spending. I think that’s just warheads. The four new subs Starmer’s referring to are estimated to cost £31-£41 billion for R&D and production. That’s currently planned to come out of the MoD’s core equipment budget which I imagine is supposed to cover everything from bullets to jets. Building new subs is obviously no small task, and the expenditure would obviously take place over a decade at least. But it’s still surprising to me that something which is relatively so fundamental, designing and building a single new ship class, would take up a further 6% of the MoD’s yearly budget (assuming £31 billion over 10 years)! Really puts how small the UK military is compared to places like America and China into perspective.
Yeah.. well... we are a pretty small country lol... and our economy isn't well managed bluntly.. public spending is super high, and even though we have way higher taxes but still have a funding black hole.. our systems are centuries old so I guess reform is just really hard. Eh.. awkward situation. China's just an anomalie because they flat out lie about gdp and financial statistics. It's literally a house of cards.
It used to just come from a separate pot of money purely for the deterrent.
Ok thanks
The nuclear budget is included so we hit the 2% target, we have also said that trident is part of NATO, I don't believe the French have done this.
That was more a courtesy to make selling Pollaris to us palatable to the Kennedy administration after they fucked us over with Skybolt. *Technically*, the UK nuclear arsenal is at NATO's disposal, rather than the UK's, 'except in cases of supreme national interest'.
So what you're telling me is we can nuke Spain over Gibraltar?
Why does MOD procurement need restructuring? I have family that works in the MOD and talked to them extensively about this topic, never really heard any serious complaints. Just can be a bit long winded but that’s needed to ensure a proper and fair tender process.
MOD procurement has had several major programmes go way over budget and under deliver in the last few decades. Think the Ajax programme, the STR 2 and f111 procurement or lack there of. It's had a few ok programmes like Archer but they're few and far between.
It's so depressing how many one grown industries have been killed my piss poor short sighted military procurement.
How? HOW!? How have the tories let even defence be stolen out from under them. They've literally let labour nick every last thing they used to be known for being strong on. My only comment is I think it should be more than 2.5%. Or both pensions and the nuclear deterrent should be spun off to a seperate budget.
Why do you think we should be spending more than 2.5% of GDP on defence?
Because the world is an increasingly dangerous place. And not only are we as a island explicitly dependant on stable international trade for pur day to day lives. As a weathy nation with both the means to help and a history of providing stability in some areas with our commonwealth partners, we have an obligation to continue to do so. Ultimately peace beings far more prosperity than any amount of aid. And we ate in a position to help ensure that peace.
Because Russia and China and Iran are explicitly gearing up for wars and are targeting the West and our Allies. I'd rather spend too much on Defence and nothing happen than spend too little on Defence and end up losing a war
All that money is going on pensions/triple lock - since May got battered for trying to slightly tone down the triple lock, subsequent Tories have gone all in on the boomer bribe policy and that money has to be found somewhere else.
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Please. I was a tory supporter. I voted for them for years. Even I don't believe the tories are actually going to do it.
While I don't oppose this, the phrase 'as long as it is achievable within Labour's borrowing rules' makes it seem like it won't happen. Unless Labour stop claiming they can fund everything without tax increases, I'm not sure they will actually be able to fund anything.
If they didn't say this, the term 'magic money tree' would be on the lips of every Tory shrill.
The current polling makes this the best time to do it then. Better than hamstringing any future government.
There's also the other side of this being 'This is what they choose to fund over ALL of the other things they promised and reneged on due to funding rules?'
This sounds an awful lot like an uncosted spending commitment of the kind folk usually criticise the Left for making...
Good. With Trump potentially headed for the White House, and Russia showing repeatedly they don’t give a fuck about prior treaties, we need a government who are willing to maintain our defences. Please don’t attack us and giving away Kent to placate an invader doesn’t cut it.
Good. I'd prefer to see defence spending raised higher still, but Labour committing itself to the same benchmark it did when it was last in power is a very welcome move now we're about to win power again.
Good. All of our adversaries are arming up so so should we.
Nuclear weapons won't deter conventional warfare, whilst useful we really need to expand the army.
If we need them, it would be nice if they could actually launch though. Trident demos have been a national embarrassment.
Yeah I saw that in the news a few weeks back. Very bizarre. I hope they actually know how to program the coordinates correctly and not send them to London.
Not sure where a Labour Govt would sit with aiding Ukraine but that international aid is very necessary if Ukraine are going to continue to repulse Russia. Russia winning would be a blow to democracy and the UK should continue to lend support to Ukraine to prevent this.
That… that’s already the plan lol The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has said “our spending will rise to 2.5% as soon as economic conditions allow” https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/09/ministers-call-for-much-greater-pace-of-uk-defence-investment
Yeah, except given the state of the Tories at the moment a committent to something is virtually a guarantee that it *won't* happen, whereas Labour are at least untested!
Yeah but the difference is, the Tories have had over 10 years to sort defence out. So far, they have only cut spending, cut procurement, drastically reduced naval assets, caused issues in training through privatisation, helped cause a recruitment crisis and much more. Jeremy hunt can say what he wants. The fact remains: defence was better under Labour.
See I like this, those cuts were a response to the gfc no? I’m told that wasn’t govt’s fault yet I look at the response in 2009 and particularly the 2010 budget (bare in mind departments need to plan so budgets set funding for the future also) So what are we saying about that, did the tories not reverse Labour’s cuts soon enough? Should they have maintained defence spending and made further cuts elsewhere? And let’s go down that further was the recession, the state of the economy in 2010 Labour’s fault? https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/australia-global-economic-crisis “The simple fact is that all of these countries went into the disaster-zone in 2008 because when the global financial crisis hurricane hit, they had high government debt and high budget deficits, which made them extremely vulnerable to adverse shocks. Had any one of these countries’ governments faced the crisis with zero government debt and consistent budget surpluses, they would have been considered pillars of strength rather than sources of weakness. What those European countries wanted for, in other words, was Australian treasurer Peter Costello running their budgets in the long lead-up to 2008.” It’s funny, high debt and budget deficits weren’t what Labour inherited was it? Note the change in discourse, 2010 it was who’d clear the deficit fastest, who’d make the ‘hard choices’, now it’s increasing spending while cutting taxes I guess we’re not crediting the government with the ability to even talk about raising the defence budget 5% over the nato target? Because you certainly couldn’t do that in 2010 could you?
No, I'm not crediting the government. All they managed to do is reduce the deficit to what it was before the financial crisis. Look at any graph of budget deficits over the years and you can see for yourself. All those funding cuts basically achieved nothing. The reason why the deficit was so much higher than normal during those years before the Tories took power is because of bailouts. The UK government spent almost £500 billion from 2008 to bailout the banks. That action was supported by the Tories, and then weaponised against labour. The £400-whatever billion spent over those years is equivalent to over 1/3 of the entire budget in 2023. The financial situation would have been the exact same under the conservatives and would have been inherited by labour if parties were reversed. That's the giant elephant in the room which Tories seem to miss. Couple the above with a recession and you have the reason for the huge budget deficit. The whole excuse for austerity ("Labour being irresponsible") was always a lie. Also, the reason why the narrative has changed is partly because austerity has been shown as a failure. Those spending reductions actually reduced tax receipts and did not lead to the promised budget surpluses. The budget deficit stayed the same as what it was for most of labours premiership. Except now, we have more potholes, less public services, less police, a much smaller army, smaller air force, smaller navy, a struggling court system and *much* more. The Tories weren't forced to do what they did. Many economists at the time said that too, and continue to say it now. The only thing I'm "crediting" this government for is running this country into the ground instead of saving the economy. Look around you, see what we've lost, and then try and work out what we have actually gained from all these years of Tory rule. The answer, of course, is *nothing* .
There is a good chance the Tories wouldn’t actually be in power at the point they would consider “economic conditions allow” so you couldn’t really say it was the plan. It’s good for Starmer to confirm it would still happen under Labour in that case
True but he’s copying their spending plans too lol https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-more-tax-and-spend-labours-fiscal-plans-revealed-f7x7f5n5s (non-paywall https://archive.is/NFRaA) Literally a vote for the status quo vs the status quo
This sub in a nutshell: Tories: does X Redditors: “we must end this austerity” Labour: does X Redditors: “what a great and brave decision”
lol literally!
If Starmer announced he would tax and spend the press would make him look like Corbyn Mk2 in no time at all. To think otherwise is just naive.
It's ridiculous really because it's obvious that in the coming 10-15 years someone, whatever party is in control, will have to tax and spend. This next parliament is probably the last one in our lifetime where the party in control can probably just cruise along with their fingers in their ears for the most part. We need infrastructure, we need to update our defence, we need to care for our ever ageing population whilst tackling a cost of living crisis that is forcing young people to reevaluate having children themselves. And then there's the climate crisis. All these things are going to have to be sorted out by one party or other and done not according to party principles but for the actual good of the country.
I agree with everything that you said there! Investment is sorely needed. My point is that if a party was to do that, large portions of the media would do everything they could to prevent it. The foreign interests and billionaires that own the media have a massive vested interest in a poor, and poorly educated population in the UK. They are far easier to manipulate with the specious arguments put forth by their bought and paid for party - the Conservatives.
Economy looks to be growing again why is spending always synonymous with tax increases?
Well it would be absolutely wonderful if we could pay for everything with a growing economy instead of taxes. Yet economies are always growing and then shrinking again. I have seemingly lived through about four "once in a lifetime recessions". The idea that we'll have enough growth in the next 10+ years to pay for all the spending that will need to be done is fantasy at the moment. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
I agree that people here are getting over-excited but it’s still a big statement from a labour leader, which until recently had a lifelong supporter of nuclear disarmament leading them.
That's not how it works, you can't claim future Tory plans are 'already the plan' then act like Starmer is repeating something when he lays out his future plan. They're in competition, one of those plans won't happen.
I think we all know ‘as soon as economic conditions allow’ is code for ‘we don’t want to do it but we can’t afford to publicly walk back another policy’
All this big spending in weaponary but no one can do nothing about shambolic housing crisis.
Don't need housing in a nuclear apocalypse, let's ensure we have a future to build houses.
Or alternatively a nuclear apocalypse so we don't have to bother.
Nukes are a prevention to the apocalypse not the cause
We’re not shooting them at ourselves.
Housing crisis is due to planning restrictions which don't even need money to fix. Just need to allow the houses to be built. Labour are promising to fix this but we'll see how they get on, people go fucking mental when anyone wants to build anything near them.
Nobody said the nuclear deterrent can't be used to deter NIMBYs
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
Housing doesn't need money. It needs planning reform. Ease planning and housing will sort itself.
Procurement needs a root and branch reform. Completely scrap the process and start from scratch, it’s the only way to prevent further mishaps.
I see the Fallout TV show was a hit with Starmer...
The alpaca threat has gone unanswered for too long!
No money for fixing the economy though. Have to wait until the economy is better before we can afford that.
That spending goes into the economy.
Do you think when the military receives money it just puts it in the bank and leaves it there?
You can say that about literally... everything. The point is that Starmer has back tracked constantly on everything with the argument "we can't afford that". Now with the military, there's suddenly money. Seems fucking disingenuous.
The economy doesn't need money to fix it. No 2 billion program is going to materially affect a 3.3 trillion machine. 2 billion is an accounting error. The economy needs legislative reform. Which fortunately is free. Unfortunately, it requires vision and planning.
Finally some interesting policy-making from Labour.
BREAKING: Labour withdraws commitment to increasing defence spending
Give it a few days, we don't know the Twitter ratio yet.
Wait a minute. Weren't labour the folks complaining about wasting money on nukes and wanting to scrap our nuclear deterrent completely?
That was the previous guy. Luckily the current guy actually lives in the real world and has done a pretty good job of distancing Labour for the previous people in charge.
Are we talking about starmer or there's another new one? (I've been abroad for a few years).
It's Corbyn you're thinking of, I imagine. Same party, (very) different leader.
Ah yeah. He was a straight up commie. Thank fuck he wasn't the prime minister when Russia invaded Ukraine or he'd probably be sending arms to Russia instead. To be fair, I always tactically voted for the tories because I absolutely hate the fanatic core of Labour. But that being said, I've never had a problem with starmer. He seems pretty grounded. IF we're gonna have a labour leader (which i suspect we soon might) he's probably as good as any for the job.
I'm the same. Labour powerful fringe groups are the single biggest thing stopping me ever voting Labour. I'm painfully aware that because of how Labour is structured, its possible for a back bench coup to make the PM a powerless puppet to the ever radical NEC. In a way that's just not possible under the tories. I live in fear of those dangerous idiots actually gaining control.
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We already are. We are one of only a few true blue water navies, the second best in the world, operating two carriers that are fully expecting to be bases for deployment of coalition aircraft. We maintain a continuous at sea nuclear deterrent, constant freedom of navigation (read shipping) patrols around the globe and maintain a small but top tier expeditionary force in the royal marines. Our air force is small and doctrinally linked to the navies requirements (f35b for all) and the army is even smaller, maintaining the smallest unit size to ensure we don't lose knowledge on a particular branch of warfare incase we need to scale up massively (ie ww3) and don't want to have to start from scratch. For all that, we do need more boats, so that we can actually deploy a carrier independently, and fill it full of our own planes. And it would be lovely if our service members went living in squalor on base.
Our navy is good, but I'd place it behind China and probably South Korea and Japan, which have bigger fleets and didn't make stupid decisions like retiring their only anti-ship missiles without replacement (ok I know we grudgingly reversed that but still).
Those three nations mostly aim to use their navies in and around their backyards. We aim to use our navy across the globe. A lot of our tonnage is in the support ships required to do that. So is it better or worse? Well it depends what your goals are.
China/Korea/Japan are all green water navies though. They aren't built for sustained operations around the globe. China wants to pretend it's a blue water navy, but it absolutely does not have the capability or the experience. The MoD can be stunningly.incompetent and idiotic though, no arguments there haha.
It absolutely is possible and a 3.3 trillion economy absolutely can afford it. It's whether we're willing to priorities that over handouts and healthcare. For perspective the spring budget increased pensions by 8.5% under the triple lock. This is about £10.8 billion. The UK military budget is £68 billion. Including both the nuclear deterrent and pensions. So *just last springs pension increase* represents a 16% possible increase in military spending.
Would only cost about 2.5 billion to remove the two child cal but no then it's all about fiscal rules and "seeing the books".
I see your point and dislike the cap, but no point removing it if those children grow up in a war-torn wasteland. We need a deterrent. God, look what Putin was happy to do even with one - he killed British citizens on British soil. He’s on manoeuvres and the Baltics are right to be worried. We need a deterrent.
Ah yes, the magic of efficiency savings. So how are Labour going to make those magic savings when they can't sack the Civil Servants who balls up the procurement in the first place?
Never mind nuclear deterrent we need to boost our interception capabilities. A bit look football, make sure you have a reliable defence before you shell out on a fancy expensive striker. It’s not hard Keir
it's not at all like football. it's a nuclear deterrence, the idea is that the other guy is so afraid of being hit by your stick he doesn't attempt to hit you with his stick. what you are suggesting is a Mexican stand off with no pistol and a helmet instead