The Labour government’s Defence Secretary John Healey came out with some interesting stuff last week, including one that said that “the UK’s armed forces are not ‘ready to fight’ a war and need to be ‘more effective’ in deterring future aggression against NATO”.
Healey told Politico that the UK had become “very skilled and ready to conduct military operations”, but needed to be “ready to fight” in order to deter other nations.
He added that ministers found the state of the armed forces was “far worse than we thought” after Labour entered government in July.
When pressed on comments by the head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, that the UK must be ready to fight a war in three years, Mr Healey said: “The UK, in keeping with many other nations, has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations. What we’ve not been ready to do is to fight. And unless we are ready to fight, we are not in a shape to deter.”
I’m actually not very sure what he means by this, and neither are many of my military colleagues. Is he saying that we’re OK at, say, swanning around Salisbury Plain on training manoeuvres but if push came to shove we don’t have what it takes?
But he added, no doubt scripted by his acolytes in the MoD, that this was “at the heart” of thinking within NATO. He told Politico’s Power Play podcast: “We’ve got to not just be capable of defending our NATO nations, but more importantly, got to be more effective in the deterrence that we can provide against any future aggression.”
Again I have no real idea what this means, and nor does he I suspect. The consensus amongst credible military commentators is that it is, to use the technical term, total bolleaux. I find it hard to disagree.
What has amused me and my ex-military chums is that Healey has felt free to criticise where we are in terms of UK defence policy but has not indicated what he is going to do about it. And I suspect this is because he and his team don’t have a Scooby Doo.
Labour really doesn’t have any sort of credible plan and it’s clutching at straws.
A large part of the blame in this lies with the current and past crop of service chiefs. By all accounts the current Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Tony Radikin, is a nice enough chap but a bit of an old granny.
To be fair to him, he was handed a poisoned chalice by his predecessor, General Sir Nick Carter, whose modus operandi seemed to be to declare that all the disasters occurring during his tenure were nothing to do with him. His attempt at sloping shoulders at the Defence Select Committee over the Ajax procurement fiasco – watch it, it’s on YouTube – amply illustrates that.
This “it was a big boy but he ran away” approach to corporate responsibility is hardly edifying. Thankfully, someone saw sense and Carter did not end up in the House of Lords (yet) where he so clearly wanted to be. “Instant karma’s going to get you” as John Lennon so presciently sang back in the ‘70s.
The fact remains though that Healey is right, notwithstanding his inability or unwillingness to say what he’s going to do about it.
In the latest twist, senior military figures have hit back at his claim that Britain’s armed forces are not prepared for war. Apparently senior army sources told the Telegraph that should the time come where the UK was engaged in war with Russia, they would “back the British soldier every day”.
Well, MRDA as they say; “Mandy Rice-Davies Applies”; “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”
Personally, I have no doubt that, man for man (or woman), British soldiers are as good as any and better than most up to and including brigade level. Above that we just can’t compete.
As one senior ex-British military commentator observed recently: “Those now in power were my peers, or subordinates … as a group they exhibited, to an extent well beyond the norm, naked careerism. They gave ‘the Boss’ exactly what he wanted regardless of any other considerations. Those who followed conviction and professional principle were all squeezed out.”
That’s the nub of the problem that John Healey and the Labour Party have to confront in defence matters. And there is no indication that they realise it or, if they do, know what to do about it.
Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a political and defence commentator and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk