‘I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.” I thought of the Duke of Wellington’s remark about his soldiers when Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, gave a speech last week in which he shivered the blood by describing the security outlook as “more contested, more ambiguous and more dangerous” than at any time in his career. This came a couple of days after a spine-chiller from Richard Horne, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre, who warned that there is “a clearly widening gap” between the UK’s vulnerability to escalating cyber warfare by adversaries and “the defences that are in place to protect us”. Another call to put up our guard has been issued by Sir Richard Moore, the head of MI6, who raised the alarm about a “staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe”. In 37 years in intelligence, he has “never seen the world in a more dangerous state”. If you are not scared yet, have a listen to Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, saying that his agency has had to “pare back” its work on counter-terrorism to meet the growing threat from Russia, Iran and other hostile states.
The cynically minded in government note that these quasi-apocalyptic alerts are being issued in the midst of a strategic defence review, which is due to report early next year, and a comprehensive spending review, which is scheduled to conclude in June. Those responsible for our security are in competition for additional resources against all the demands for more spending from the civilian side of the street.
Be as cynical about it as you like, you can’t fairly accuse the military and intelligence chiefs of crying wolf when they describe a world pulsing with perils. Troops from North Korea have been sent to support Vladimir Putin’s attempt to devour Ukraine. It is reasonable to assume that anything that looks like a victory for the Russian dictator will embolden Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. Britain is one of the primary targets for cyber attacks by malevolent state and non-state actors. The number at the top end of the severity scale has tripled in a year and included one that targeted London’s hospitals. Senior military officers privately worry that Britain’s forces would have difficulty fighting a high-intensity war in Europe for more than a month or two. Labour, when in opposition, decried the depleted condition of the armed forces. The government has effectively conceded that Britain is not spending sufficient on defence by saying it will bring the level up to 2.5% of GDP. What it has not yet done is set a date. Until there’s a deadline for delivery, the commitment is about as useful as a fireguard made of chocolate.
The Treasury regards the Ministry of Defence as a wasteful money pit – as indeed it often has been – and will balk at handing substantial additional funds to the military. But it is hard to see how we are not going to be spending extra on security and many analysts already think it will have to be more like 3% of GDP. Which will mean less for the domestic ambitions Labour was elected to pursue.
This is one of several stark dilemmas confronting Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Donald Trump will be back in the White House next month and even before he’s got there, the advance tremors are shaking many of the assumptions Britain used to make about the world. The once and future US president is no friend to global rules, human rights, democracy or free trade. He is no fan of the western international structures his country did so much to build after 1945, and which the UK has relied upon to underpin its security and prosperity. He has vowed to start imposing sweeping tariffs on day one of his second term and suggested he’d compel the Ukrainians to accept a land-for-peace deal. He will face Britain with tough choices in a host of critical areas, including the regulation of AI, carbon pricing and how to handle China. Downing Street is putting a lot of faith – much too much, I fear – in its ability to influence the Trump White House for the better. Where there needs to be hard thinking, there appears to be a lot of the wishful variety.
So how about a big pivot to Europe? Sir Keir’s crab-like effort to “reset” relations with our neighbours has produced some warmish words, signatures on a defence co-operation agreement with Berlin and, er, that’s about it so far. The Labour leader has been emphatic about what he doesn’t want by repeatedly ruling out any attempt to return the UK to either the customs union or the single market. The complaint you often hear from the other side of the Channel is that they aren’t clear what the UK does want or what kind of deals Sir Keir would be willing to strike. Any further progress will be stalled while the EU’s two most important players are missing in action. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is heading towards elections after the implosion of its troubled coalition government. In France, the EU’s only nuclear-armed power, the toppling of Michel Barnier makes him the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the fifth republic. I hear some ministers here making self-congratulatory noises about Britain being a haven of “stability” in a turbulent world. But it is not an advantage to the UK that its most significant allies among the European democracies are dysfunctional and Mr Maga is about to unleash his special brand of mayhem from the Oval Office. It has never looked more exposed to be Brexit Britain adrift somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic as the waves get larger and choppier.
There is reason to wonder whether Sir Keir has fully grasped the scale and the acuity of the challenges. His recent address at Mansion House, the first major speech devoted to international affairs since he became prime minister, essentially denied that the UK is facing any strategic dilemmas. In his telling, we can foster “renewed relations with our neighbours in Europe” while simultaneously investing “more deeply than ever in the transatlantic bond with our American friends”. You can see why he is cleaving to this Panglossian view as you can also understand why he insists that it is “plain wrong” to say that the UK has to choose between America and Europe. The US is – or anyway has been – Britain’s most essential ally when it comes to defence and intelligence. The UK does a lot of trade with the US, but much more with the EU.
The idea that Britain can be besties with both the US and Europe is out of the Tony Blair playbook before 9/11 shook the geopolitical kaleidoscope. In his early years as prime minister, he presented the UK as uniquely placed to be a transatlantic “bridge”. We were an indispensable ally to America by being its greatest buddy in Europe and an invaluable partner for Europe by representing it to Washington. The Blair bridge collapsed when he joined the American invasion of Iraq, which France, Germany and most of the rest of the EU opposed.
The French were mocked in America as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. We know that the Trumpian mindset is even more ferociously with-us-or-against-us. He denounces the EU as a “mini-China” on trade and his acolytes disparage it as “socialist”. Stephen Moore, a senior economic adviser to the incoming president, expressed the Trump worldview when he recently declared that Britain had to pick between aligning with the US and trying to get closer to the EU. Remarks made by other Trump advisers suggest it is very likely that he will present the Starmer government with demands designed to drive wedges between Britain and its neighbours. Sir Keir may not want to choose a side, but he may find himself compelled to if the US triggers a full-blown global trade war.
Another and even more severe test will present itself if, as there are compelling reasons to fear, Trump attempts to coerce Ukraine into an armistice that rewards Russian aggression by leaving the Kremlin in possession of vast chunks of stolen territory. Will the UK be prepared to incur the wrath of the White House by resisting a “dirty peace”? Or will the Starmer government abase itself by going along with a sell-out of the Ukrainians that would throw European security into even greater jeopardy? Sir Keir is trying to smooth over the hard choices, but he won’t be able to swerve them for all that much longer.
• Andrew Rawnsley is the Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
