At a time of significant geopolitical strategic risk and uncertainty, on May 7 the United Kingdom faces the most unpredictable election in memory. What does this mean for defense?
The results of previous British elections have often been in doubt — but we knew one of the two main parties would have an overall majority.
Then there was the old joke: the Conservatives, who were trusted with defense, were the only ones who could cut it; Labour, who weren’t, didn’t dare do the same.
At least the joke still proved true in 2010 when that election resulted in a Conservative-led coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Sure enough, to deal with the national fiscal crisis, that government, of which I was a part, cut defense.
In 2015, the fragmentation of British politics makes much more complex combinations possible. Still, either David Cameron or Ed Miliband will be prime minister.
My own hunch is the current administration will be re-elected, but with fewer Liberal Democrats and a smaller majority. It might have to look to the Democratic Unionists from Ulster to keep it in power, and they have said that a commitment to the NATO minimum of 2 percent of national income on defense will be a red line in any deal.
Alternatively, the Scottish Nationalists look set to take a significant number of seats in Labour’s Scottish heartland, and their price for supporting a Labour government would be reduced defense spending and scrapping the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
The election itself was to have been about the economy, the health service and leadership. Both major parties planned to cut defense spending, but not to talk about it. They felt secure in doing this because defense wasn’t an issue. Russian President Vladimir Putin may have changed that. The sense that the security of Europe is at risk has emboldened politicians across the spectrum to speak out.
Our objective is to secure a commitment from both major parties to spend that NATO minimum of 2 percent. We all know it’s an arbitrary figure, but it’s a target to which the UK should be morally committed after what the prime minister said at the Newport Summit.
I fear the campaign will not secure its objective, but it may spare defense from cuts on the scale previously planned. Certainly there are encouraging signs of a bidding war between the two main parties as they realize there may be votes in defense after all.
The debate, though, mustn’t just be about money. We should be just as worried about the current government’s plans to conduct a near-secret strategic defense and security review (SDSR), which will settle how these diminished funds are used.
For too long now, British politicians have been living a lie: that we can avoid strategic shrinkage while cutting defense spending. The 2015 SDSR will have to make unpalatable decisions, or simply not be credible.
With the commitment to bring the two Queen Elizabeth carriers into service, the clear intention to acquire new maritime patrol capability and the need to build successor boats for the nuclear deterrent, options look pretty limited. Add to these what the prime minister has said about no more reductions in regular Army numbers and the constraints appear almost total.
It is painfully obvious that the timetable for the SDSR is far from the most effective to develop strategic coherence. The constitutional innovation of fixed-term, five-year parliaments looks likely to endure. This means each review will be held in the first year of a new administration.
Even with the re-election of the present government, considerable turbulence is inevitable in ministerial teams. The new ministers will be thrown immediately into the complexities and high strategy of a crucial SDSR. The logic claimed for the current process is that it sits well alongside a comprehensive spending review (CSR), which determines the resources available for each department.
Would detaching the SDSR from the CSR drumbeat make for more informed and strategy-driven decision-making? My conclusion is that every alternative brings new problems — unless, implausibly, the Treasury offered defense a blank check, exempting it from the full rigors of the CSR.
But could the risk of turmoil be reduced by an open process with policy papers published in advance to which the major opposition parties — and industry — have contributed and, where possible, agreed?
Could we separate out more clearly the strategic security policy issues, settling them first across the party divide — with the consequences for delivery, by defense, the Home Office and others, the subject of a subsequent, more clearly separate process? In theory, the National Security Strategy comes first and “the associated Strategic Defence and Security Review … builds on it,” according to the National Security Strategy published in 2010. The time has come to give that theory greater reality.
Useful parallels can be drawn with the government’s open approach to the development of industrial strategies, including the Defence Growth Partnership.
Sadly, though, at this election, the debate about spending will be the surrogate for a proper strategic conversation with the nation. The prospects for a truly coherent outcome from the SDSR may look bleak, but at least the resources for defense may now be higher than would otherwise have been the case.
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Sir Peter Luff is a UK member of Parliament and former defense procurement minister.
