In order to maintain
the fiction that government must always abide by the arbitrary fiscal rules
that it itself writes, any additional expenditure in one area must be balanced
either by cutting expenditure in another area, or else by increasing revenue.
Or so says Sir Starmer. It’s dangerous nonsense, not least because it
legitimises the arguments of all those arguing that ‘we should look after our
own first’ by validating the idea that spending on refugees and asylum-seekers
always and necessarily reduces the money available for homeless people (to choose
one example), and especially homeless armed service veterans, a group
considered by right-wingers as being particularly deserving. It would still be
nonsense, even if it didn’t completely ignore the fact that the reasons for
there being so many homeless people in that category are far more complex than
a simple lack of cash or housing.
So when it comes to
a demand from the military for more soldiers and more equipment, the first
things in the government’s sights are, as ever, the old favourites: overseas aid,
immigrants, welfare and the pensions triple lock. It is, apparently, entirely
‘obvious’ that those best-placed to bear the burden of paying for additional weaponry
and military manpower are the poorest and weakest in society, both at home and
abroad. Starmer’s announcement yesterday to divert money from the aid budget
and increase the proportion of GDP devoted to preparing for war is hardly a
surprise in that context.
The idea that
defence preparedness should be measured by the proportion of GDP spent on
armaments is, and always has been, a spectacularly stupid one, because there
can never be any guarantee that spending more leads to a more effective
fighting force. It could be achieved, for instance, by simply doubling the
salary of every member of the armed forces. In itself, that might not be a bad
thing to do anyway; the pay of junior ranks is not exactly over-generous, so
maintaining the numbers involves targeting recruitment at young people living
in the most deprived areas. (Recruitment isn’t
currently terribly effective either, and whilst outsourcing
recruitment might have generated private profit, it hasn’t done
much for the numbers.) But increasing salaries wouldn’t make the forces any
more useful for war-fighting. Alternatively, they could simply pay more for the
equipment that they buy. That might sound like a silly idea, but given the
MoD’s history in procurement,
it’s one of the likeliest outcomes of an increase in budget. And while paying
more for the same equipment (let alone buying equipment which either doesn’t
work or is not needed) might help meet the arbitrary target of a percentage of
GDP, it doesn’t improve the capability of the UK’s armed forces.
What Sir Starmer did
yesterday is what he has been saying for months that he would not do, which is
to pre-empt the conclusion of the Strategic Defence Review. Worse still, the
reason he’s done it is more about appeasing the madman in the White House than
about defending the UK. The working assumption of the military mind – and, it
would appear, the Sir Starmer mind – is that the supposed enemy is just waiting
for us to drop our guard before launching an all-out invasion to seize land and
oppress the population. How likely is that in practice? Assuming for a moment
that the enemy really wants to control the UK, invasion is about the least
cost-effective way of doing it. Far better and a great deal cheaper in terms of
lives as well as money to take over the country from within and install a
puppet government, as committed to rule by oligarch as Putin himself is. It
increasingly looks like a strategy which has worked beyond his wildest dreams
in the US, and brings a bonus in that the puppet government can help him to
repeat the trick elsewhere.
On the receiving end
of Sir Starmer’s pusillanimity are some of the poorest and most underdeveloped
countries in the world, already hit by the body blow of the Trumpian destruction of USAID.
Still, it is, as they say, ‘an ill wind…’,
and for a government obsessed with growth there is one group of ‘entrepreneurs’
likely to see an increase in demand for their services – people smugglers. One
of the likeliest consequences of aid cuts will be an increase in the number of
people seeking to migrate from where they currently live to the richest
countries of the world – including the UK – in search of a better life. Whether
Sir Starmer’s attack on living standards of the poorest in the UK acts as a
sufficient counter-deterrent remains to be seen.
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