John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
Regularly writing columns, you get used to deadlines.
Keeping to them is a mark of competence, which tends to ingratiate you with editors. It shows you are probably organised and doing the proper thinking and preparation to keep ahead of your commitments.
[Can fully confirm! – The Editor]
Missing them, except for real moments of crisis, betrays a lack of seriousness.
The same view should really be taken of government.
This week, the government was due to produce its Defence Investment Plan, setting out how it intends to raise and spend money on defence for the next four years. The plan was already 9 months overdue, caught in battles between the MOD and the Treasury over the scale and the source of the required funding. Now it has been postponed a few more weeks, with indications from Whitehall it will land in time for the NATO summit this month.
All this delay has real consequences. The plan will set the direction of our defensive readiness for the next half-decade or so, at a time when tensions are obviously rising. The details of it will determine not just the role and expectations of our forces, but also the defence industry that supports them. Pushing back the review has affected trading conditions and the flow of investment across the sector.
Uncertainty is plaguing companies which provide critical services and generate high-value domestic jobs. Many have seen contracts paused or deferred in anticipation of the plan, with industry bodies reporting that almost 90 per cent of tech firms connected to the MOD have experienced funding delays or disruptions. Such uncertainty makes it harder to attract capital or to know which capabilities and contracts to build towards. By deferring the key decisions, the government risks weakening the very sector it will rely on to deliver.
The delays speak to the broader weakness of this government in turning ambitions into strategy. Despite ample notice that he would likely come to power with a considerable majority, Starmer’s approach to 2024 focused on minimising electoral risk rather than on forming a coherent plan for government. He failed to lay the intellectual or organisational groundwork for running the country and instead fell into a series of haphazard decisions.
Almost all of the government’s major mistakes stem from this inability to confront hard decisions. By committing themselves to both the fiscal rules and avoiding raising the main direct taxes, they boxed themselves in without thinking about what it meant for governing. This forced them into economically damaging taxes, such as the employers’ NIC rise, or politically difficult spending proposals, such as Winter Fuel and the two-child cap. Even now, the fiscal rules are maintained by pledges to reduce spending from 2027 onwards that seem unlikely to be kept. It looks like governing without a plan.
Defence is a perfect example of this. The party had ambitions around increasing spending but hadn’t engaged with the obvious next questions. More money for defence, without changing the fiscal rules, requires one of two things: cuts elsewhere or higher taxes. The government has floundered in deciding which, and so the practical stage of improving our readiness has been delayed.
These decisions may not be easy or particularly popular, but strategy and leadership require engaging with that. Politics ought to be about developing a plan and arguing for it, rather than demurring. On defence, the government has had plenty of opportunity to develop a strategy and sell it to the public. From the outset, the argument was there – explaining the risks of the world we now inhabit, setting out what needed to be done, and persuading the public of the fiscal consequences. Instead, they have delayed and deferred.
There is now a further risk. By the time of the NATO summit, the Makerfield by-election will have been held. Should Andy Burnham win, he will be arriving in Westminster as the presumptive challenger to Starmer. If he loses, Labour will be thrown into a crisis where not even its most popular politician can succeed in a heartland seat. Either outcome probably means a leadership contest, a new PM, and a broader reshuffle.
A change of leadership could easily throw the whole thing open again.
Few new PMs like to be bound by their predecessors’ decisions, especially when it comes to large and potentially unpopular spending commitments. Instead, they will want to establish their own authority and their own approach to spending and taxes. There’s every chance the whole thing gets delayed again while a new government essentially grapples with the same problem of matching aspiration with action once more.
Unless a new leader has a real sense of what is to be done and the political capital to fight for it, we could end up with more decisions kicked into the long grass. Even the risk of derailment could have an impact, with investing decisions and contracts delayed until a new administration has set out a clear plan. Every day of such a delay would have consequences, with the Treasury and MOD unlikely to make commitments if there is a real chance they will be reviewed and reconsidered. This would delay our armed forces’ readiness to rise to looming threats and expose the sector to continued uncertainty. Something that should have been an early priority for this government may end up being shunted back to the second half of this parliament.
Some deadlines matter more than others.
Editors will often indulge the odd piece of late copy. World affairs are far less forgiving of a lack of readiness.
We are already several years behind in properly and adequately funding defence for the challenges we face. Deferring again comes with real costs to both our armed forces and the companies that supply them. It is also revelatory of a broader problem: if governments want things to happen, they need more than ambition. Following through requires accepting trade-offs and selling them to the public. Can-kicking simply perpetuates indecision and results in the same choices being made in a worse position.