Defence: Bigger problems than new toys

Defence is shaping up to be one of the longest and most comprehensive policies on the Manifesto Project website. I could, and probably will, add more detail. It is an inherently interesting area, with a great deal happening. Every nation on earth is having to revisit its defence doctrine and re-equip for battlefield concepts that simply weren’t on anyone’s radar a decade ago.

Occasionally I have to remind myself not to go down the kit-stroking rabbit hole. Policy should set tone and general direction rather than making equipment recommendations at the micro level. One of the strengths of the framework so far is that it doesn’t go in for blank-slatism. It is grounded in sorting out the messes within existing constraints.

Here, I approach the armed forces the same way I approach political parties. I ask what they are actually for and whether they themselves know. Wherever you find dysfunction, you tend to find a root definition problem. The reason the IDF proves so lethal is because it knows what it is for, who it is fighting and where.

Britain’s position is more complicated. It must protect its overseas territories, maintain its NATO commitments, sustain a credible domestic defence force and a deterrent. The real complication is the direction of travel and the divergence between the governing class and the wider public.

The establishment sees Russia as the predominant threat while also keeping an eye on China. But in the public eye NATO does not enjoy quite the same reverence it once did, and there is no public appetite for foreign adventures or even peacekeeping interventions. The tilt on both the fringe left and right is towards isolationism and neutrality, and the fringes often indicate the direction of travel. This is a generational pivot.

As a result the gulf between the public and the state will only widen. Foreign expeditions do not enjoy the necessary public backing. Meanwhile the left seems in rather a hurry to dispense with any British overseas territories.

We are a nation that cannot agree who the enemy is, or even whether there is an enemy. Many on the right observe that the greatest threat to the British way of life is the establishment itself, not least by its refusal to maintain our borders. Meanwhile there isn’t even agreement on what constitutes Britishness.

With a deeply fragmented demos and so little common ground even among natives, there is no sense of national unity, thus no sense of national purpose, no sense of common endeavour, no shared values, and therefore no coherence to foreign policy — especially when it is heavily influenced by immigrant cohorts. A country in the middle of a full-blown identity crisis, to the extent that nobody is in a rush to fight for Britain, cannot hope to arrive at a coherent approach to defence.

This fragmentation has direct consequences for the armed forces themselves. Recruitment and retention problems are not simply questions of pay or marketing. They reflect a deeper reality: when Britishness is contested and large numbers of people living in Britain do not regard the country as their primary loyalty, the willingness to serve, let alone to fight and die for it, steadily erodes. A military drawn from a divided society will struggle to maintain the cohesion and morale required for anything beyond low-intensity operations.

The same problem makes any serious defence strategy politically unsustainable. A government that commits to NATO deployments, forward presence or higher defence spending will eventually face resistance once the costs become visible in blood or treasure. Without a shared national interest that the majority of the population recognises and is prepared to defend, even necessary policies lose legitimacy the moment they demand sacrifice.

In that respect even the most pragmatic and realistic attempt to devise a defence policy for Britain is working to a hypothetical version of a unified country that, in the real world, no longer exists in any meaningful sense.

Restoring the cohesion required for credible defence policy would demand more than new white papers or increased spending. We need to regaining meaningful control over who enters and remains in the country, so that assimilation can actually occur rather than being overwhelmed by continuous inflows. It would also require institutions to stop treating the historic British population and its culture as just one interest group among many, and instead treat national continuity as a legitimate priority. Without these foundations, talk of “shared values” or “common purpose” remains rhetorical.

The political barrier is substantial. Much of the governing class has spent decades arguing that national identity is outdated or dangerous, while demographic change has created new electoral incentives that reward further fragmentation. Reversing course would therefore need a sustained shift in elite incentives and public pressure strong enough to overcome institutional resistance. Countries that have successfully maintained higher levels of cohesion in the modern era have generally done so by prioritising cultural compatibility in immigration policy and refusing to apologise for the existence of a core national identity. Britain has done neither for a generation.