How seriously should we now take threats to Britain’s national security?   Liberals by temperament have never been hawkish on defence, though concerned increasingly with threats to society and economy like pandemic diseases and climate change.   We’ve been happy with the progressive transfer of funds for defence into health and welfare since the end of the Cold War 35 years ago, including the selling-off of former barracks and training centres for what used to be the Territorial Army – though we’ve been very unhappy about recent cuts in development spending to find money for defence.  But the international situation has now changed for the worse.  Russian ships are prospecting for cables around our coasts, drones hover over neighbouring countries, there are cyber-attacks and occasional sabotage on British soil, and President Trump trusts Russia more than the UK and our European neighbours.

In July the government published a major Strategic Defence Review (SDR).  The Prime Minister’s introduction declared that ‘when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.’  He did not add that we may well have to meet the danger – and the new forms of hybrid warfare that includes – without the full support of the USA.  The SDR and associated documents – the ‘National Security Strategy’, covering also climate and health threats, and the ‘UK Government Resilience Action Plan’ – set out some radical ideas about what is needed to respond.  The government has promised an increase of 1% of GDP on defence and security within the next 4-5 years, to double to 5% of GDP by 2035 – not a sign of immediate urgency.  More immediately the SDR calls for a ‘national conversation’ to engage the public in the ‘whole society’ response that is required.

Since then there has been silence. No national conversation has been launched by our timid and distracted government.  The budget has put off spending more on security and defence; the Ministry of Defence has reportedly been told to hold back on several spending programmes.  General Sir Richard Barrons, one of the three lead-authors of the SDR (along with George Robertson and Fiona Hill) has just told a think-tank conference that the budget means that ‘for two years defence goes backwards’.  Conservatives and Reform are so preoccupied with cutting taxes that they have made no criticisms of this, nor said anything about security and defence as priorities.  So what should we be saying, against the weight of right-wing focus on lower taxes and the overall timidity of the Labour government?

The most radical concept, for me, in the SDR is the call for a ‘whole society’ approach to national security.  After several decades in which government has engaged its citizens less and less in public life or forms of public service, this conjures up the idea of active citizenship, in local communities as well as contributing to national efforts, volunteering to respond to national emergencies and domestic and external threats.  It emphasises local responses, expanding civilian rescue teams, emergency responders, police and military reserves, and a new Home Defence Force, ‘to improve national resilience.’  This would be a reversal of what we have seen in recent decades, with Labour governments seeing themselves as delivering services to a largely passive population, Conservatives denigrating public service, squeezing local government and selling off Territorial Army depots and drill halls.