John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
In the 1870s, world attention was focused on conflict and shipping lanes. A Russian advance towards Constantinople threatened the Dardanelles and, with it, British access. Where now global affairs spawn memes, back then, the public engaged through music hall and pub songs. The threat of conflict spawned one of the most famous. As you monitored the situation, you’d have the GH McDermott refrain: “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do. We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” It became so widespread that Jingoism became a shorthand for an aggressive foreign policy.
A century and a half later, and Britain’s position looks a little different. For sure, we do not want to fight. Public opinion remains against all but the most limited defensive action in Iran. More generally, we have become far more reluctant to incur casualties or deal out destruction. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved especially chastening and unpopular. Those conflicts feel particularly pertinent here, as the US leads the way with little apparent strategy or plan. For old Jingoism, however, that all seems moot. Unlike the late nineteenth century, we don’t have the ships, the men, or the money.
Our funding for the armed forces has declined almost continuously since the end of the Second World War. Forces were scaled back during decolonisation and further cut as we realised the post-Cold War “peace dividend”. The Tories must accept the blame for further entrenching this through austerity. Spending on the armed forces was cut further, with troop numbers falling to the lowest levels since the Napoleonic Wars.
It is not just the men (or these days, personnel) that we lack. Numerous military observers have raised alarms about equipment and capability gaps. Defence expects, and retired Generals have questioned, whether we could actually field our Nato commitments without logistical support from other nations. Behind these headline concerns lie broader problems with recruitment and retention, military housing and the terrible woes of our defence procurement processes. The hurried deployment of HMS Dragon has indicated the strain that exists between our defensive ambitions and our capabilities.
We are also quickly learning that this is the more important part of the refrain. We may not wish to choose war, but we may not have a choice. The events of the last fortnight have shown how our interests can be drawn into conflicts that we have no role in starting. So does the continued threat of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. We must be ready to respond when our enemies target us or our allies. Equally, if our ability to deter our adversaries is to remain effective, it must be credible. None of this can happen without a proper financial commitment to our military.
Our politicians have partly acknowledged this. Defence spending is set to rise, gradually, to 3.5 per cent of GDP by the mid-2030s. Questions remain, however, over whether that is fast enough or big enough, and how it will translate into the capabilities needed to meet the challenges of the next decade. But there is a broader political problem too, about how that sits with the wider demands of the state and the economy. Politicians and voters like long-term plans like this. It sounds good, but it defers decisions about the consequences. They can’t be put off forever.
Decades of reducing military spending have allowed the money to move elsewhere. Left-wing governments have tended to transfer it into social spending, right-wing ones into tax cuts. Boosting military spending once again means reversing one or both of these (or else ever more borrowing). Properly equipping our military will require reductions in other public services or higher levies.
The current government has failed to articulate this or the realities that lie behind it. The world is becoming increasingly fractious. The United States is, at best, demanding that we and other European powers pay more of our own way. At worst, it is becoming an unreliable ally in defending our continent. This all requires a stark rethinking of how we defend ourselves, the bill, and the consequences. Yet rarely is this spelt out to the British public.
Such reticence will undermine the political will to increase defence funding. If the voters are going to accept the costs of rearmament, the positive case needs to be made. This includes bluntly explaining the risks that those of us who obsessively monitor the news are already aware of. It also requires setting out why our military power matters. Strength and security are not about expeditionary wars and messes of our own making like Iraq. Twice in the last half-decade, energy prices have spiked because of foreign wars. Maintaining peace is vital to protecting our economy from threats like inflation.
For the Conservatives, it gives us a chance to speak about the sort of state we want to build. While it may not be the time for public mea culpae, we need to be intellectually honest that we have let down our armed forces in the past and that we can’t now cut our way to security. The armed forces are central to our state. If we are to prioritise security, it comes at the expense of things we’d otherwise choose to do, whether that is spending or tax cuts. As we look for a credible programme, we must make those choices and advocate for them. Otherwise, we repeat the government’s problems, picking a target without a plan for how to get there or building political consent for it.
Times have moved on from the jingoism of the music hall sing-along. Britain is not an imperial power. We are unlikely to ever launch a war of our own choosing or sail out to police the relations of two distant countries. We still, however, have interests to defend. We want to influence our allies and strengthen our ability to deter the most serious threats we face. As a country, we still need the ships, the men, and the money.
That programme, whatever form it takes, must ultimately rest on something more durable than targets and timelines. It requires a political party willing to look the public in the eye and explain the world as it is and to make the honest case for what serious defence of our interests costs. Not just in numbers, but with the implications for where the money comes from – either with achievable cuts elsewhere, or higher taxation. For the Conservatives, embracing that argument is not just a matter of national security. It is the clearest possible signal that we are once again a party serious enough to govern. The refrain needs updating. We still need to prove we mean it.