Keir Starmer needs a better story to sell his defence leadership
4 min read
Keir Starmer should be commended for delivering where predecessors failed on national defence. But without better communication, he may struggle to bring voters, and even some of his MPs, with him.
Keir Starmer looked compelling as he delivered the strategic defence review on Monday.
It is a major staging post on the country’s necessary path back to a national focus on defence and security that slowly ebbed as successive governments took the ‘peace dividend’ for granted and assumed conflict between major powers was a thing of the past.
The Prime Minister is owning this moment and leading from the front. He is making difficult switch spend choices, and setting out a sustained case for increased security investment that defence-minded parliamentarians such as myself have been imploring his predecessors to embrace for many years.
Labour’s genuine focus on defence is all the more remarkable considering the party he inherited on being elected leader, ravaged by Jeremy Corbyn.
But the Prime Minister and his strategists in No 10 will know that this is far from job done.
People like me may be delighted by the way the government is taking defence and security, but the PM must do so much more to take the public and – crucially – his anxious Parliamentary Labour Party with him on the difficult road ahead.
Despite the war in Ukraine raging on their doorstep and myriad signals that the world is ever more dangerous and turbulent, increasing Britain’s capacity to defend itself remains alarmingly low on voters’ priority lists. Polling presented to the London Defence Conference last month by Focaldata noted that only 15 per cent of the public are strongly committed to defence increases, with 45 per cent opposing raising spending to the new NATO target of 3.5 per cent if it entails raising taxes or cutting public services.
And while the PM will mostly receive strong backing from his MPs, most of those same parliamentarians are more likely to urge him to increase spending on an array of domestic priorities – winter fuel payments, tackling child poverty, their local hospital, better schools, fixing deficient transport networks.
The government needs to be clearer on how increased national security is an essential part of delivering on local priorities, the burning injustices which brought the overwhelming majority of Labour activists into public life.
His interview with Nick Robinson on the Today programme on Monday epitomised how the gap between security and civil issues seems too stark at present. The presenter started the interview quizzing Security Keir, who was on commanding form. When questions turned to domestic issues, he seamlessly shifted to Anti-Poverty Keir and gave a convincing account of his government’s conduct on winter fuel payments and its mission to tackle child poverty.
At the moment, a growing number of electorally vulnerable Labour MPs are faced with a party in Reform which can promise what it likes, and think they are hearing from their leader: “Yes, I do care about B (domestic priority or aid spending) but we can’t do much about it yet because we must prioritise A (defence spending).”
We need stronger defence spending precisely so we can protect our way of life, taken for granted by many who did not live through the trauma of world wars or the Cold War.
Investing in the deterrence measures being outlined in the SDR is expensive, and even 3.5 per cent of GDP dedicated to defence is unlikely to be sufficient to protect us from the multiple threats facing the West.
But if our country is plunged into conflict – now a real possibility – the costs to our economy will be so much greater. They will drive a coach and horses through all Labour’s ambitions for tackling deprivation and restoring public services from their current appalling state.
It will be harder to deliver better living standards and fix the NHS if Russia’s aggression in Ukraine spreads even closer to our borders. If global shipping routes are held to ransom, if China challenges the West’s resolve by invading Taiwan, or if vital public services and financial systems are thrown into chaos by a state-sponsored cyber-attack.
The Prime Minister knows that stronger defence underpins everything we want to achieve for Britain and its people. He has grown into the job exceptionally over a difficult year and is shouldering his responsibilities across many diverse fronts.
But he must communicate the essential link better and tackle the sense from his internal critics that being strong on defence means being weak on genuine Labour priorities. Because the public and his MPs remain to be convinced, and could yet turn against this defence drive.
Lord Walney is a crossbench peer.
