Lord Robertson of Port Ellen’s intervention in the debate on the defence of the UK and our national interests has certainly set the cat among the pigeons.
George Robertson is a respected former Labour Secretary of State for Defence and former Nato Secretary General. Given that background and experience, what he has to say carries some considerable weight.
It is also indicative of how worried elements within the Labour Party have become over the Prime Minister and his Cabinet’s handling of global political events. Robertson is no outsider, railing against the establishment.
He is and always has been part of the inner circle of the Labour party hierarchy, and for him to speak out at his point in time is significant.
Others are better qualified to comment on the battle for the heart and soul of the Labour Government, but it’s clear there are stresses and strains between the centre-right of the party, of which Robertson is one, and the leftward tendency epitomised by Rayner, Reeves, Miliband et al.
But let’s just explore a little further what Robertson is saying. "There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain's political leadership," he said in a speech at the Guildhall in Salisbury.
"Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger. But even a promised national conversation about defence can't be started."
Robertson and his team delivered the Starmer Government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in June last year. The follow-on Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was meant to be published shortly thereafter, but has yet to see the light of day.
The word is that the MoD, the Treasury, and 10 Downing Street are at loggerheads over allocation of funds.
The decision by Robertson to call out the Prime Minister and his Chancellor over their failure to rearm the UK at speed in the face of growing threats marks the most significant intervention on defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
The key question now is whether his call to arms will force Starmer’s hand.
Keir Starmer ignores the ex-Nato chief’s dire warning at his own peril - and Britain’s - Lt Col Stuart Crawford
|Getty Images
The response from the UK’s Prime Minister has been, to date, predictably anaemic. It’s telling that when immediate action is obviously required, his only public announcement on the topic has been of a joint conference to be held with France’s President Macron this Friday (17 April) on easing the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Words, not action, are still the order of the day.
Dr Fiona Hill, the British-American academic who was part of Robertson’s review team together with General Sir Richard Barrons, has now added her voice to Lord Robertson’s warning.
These are people who tend not to make a habit of such interventions. “Something is rotten in the state of Britain”, as William Shakespeare might have written if he were around today.
Robertson is absolutely right. I have written too many times to remember about the sorry state of the UK’s armed forces and how they need immediate and significant additional funding to stop the rot.
Such pleas fall on deaf ears. Britain now spends, at a time of increased national security risks, between five and six times as much on welfare as it does on defence.
Something is far wrong here, and more committees and consultations are not the way to fix it.
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