Andy Burnham’s defense dilemma is just beginning

Por Mason Boycott-Owen, Esther Webber — War in Ukraine – POLITICO

LIVERPOOL, England — Britain has a new prime minister, but the defense spending dispute that helped destabilize his predecessor’s government has not gone away.

Next month Andy Burnham’s fledgling government will deliver its first budget, offering the clearest indication yet of how it intends to fund Britain’s growing defense commitments. Yet at the Labour Party’s conference this week, defense barely featured in the new prime minister’s resolutely domestic political agenda.

Burnham used his first conference speech as Labour leader to confront politically difficult issues, including potentially rejoining the European Union and reforming the state pension triple lock. Despite heightened tensions with Russia, defense received only a passing mention.

That has left Labour MPs and defense experts asking how Burnham will do what Starmer could not: find the money to meet Britain’s defense ambitions. More broadly, they are looking for signs of whether the new prime minister intends to change Labour’s defense policy — or simply recast it around his domestic agenda of jobs, industry and economic renewal.

Déjà vu danger

In June, in the midst of Keir Starmer’s nadir as Labour leader, Defence Secretary John Healey unexpectedly resigned amid a row over defense spending. His resignation letter explicitly stated that the core reason behind his departure was a lack of commitment to spend 3% of GDP on defense by 2030.

Now Healey is back in government as chancellor, on the other side of the spending argument.

He is not expected to lay out a full funding pathway on Britain’s defense commitments in October’s budget, but has committed to fully funding the £5 billion shortfall in the Defence Investment Plan.

Wes Streeting, who was appointed defense secretary in a surprise move by Burnham, appears alive to the danger of repeating the disputes of the Starmer government. Speaking to POLITICO at the Labour conference Monday, he said: “We can’t just send in John Healey’s resignation letter as our submission to the spending review.”

A senior Labour MP with a background in security, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said deferring the pathway to 3% of GDP on defense to a spending review next year was “already too late,” and showed the U.K. was “not serious” about scaling up at pace and absorbing the lessons of the Ukraine war.

He added there was a danger that Healey’s appointment as chancellor could become a fig leaf for shortcomings in the funding of the Ministry of Defence.

Others are more forgiving, suggesting Burnham’s appointments of Healey and Streeting indicate the prime minister won’t neglect defense.

One Labour MP said they were “not hugely concerned” that Burnham hasn’t spoken much about defense, adding: “Keir [Starmer] spoke about it all the time, and John Healey as defense secretary said all the right things for two years and achieved very little.”

“I’d rather see radical action — which I believe Wes [Streeting] has the talent and ability to do.”

Getting serious

Labour figures in the defense world expressed nervousness about delays in holding a promised national conversation about the country’s defenses in order to help prepare voters for the reallocation of public money — an area where they see the U.K. lagging far behind Eastern European countries.

Emily Thornberry, chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior Labour lawmaker, said the public needed to be made more aware of threats facing the U.K. to build consensus for a reallocation of money to defense.

“When the previous prime minister’s car and flat gets attacked by [Russian] proxies, they are trying to undermine us as a society … We need to show more examples of this so the public understand,” she said.

Some defense figures were perturbed by an interview given by Housing Secretary Angela Rayner — whose ministerial portfolio includes safeguarding communities and democracy. When she was asked what she would stockpile in the event of a national emergency, she replied that she would need mascara, concealer, sauvignon blanc, beans and custard.

One defense industry representative called her answer “disappointing” and said it undermined the seriousness with which the government needed to treat the issue.

Domestic focus

What Burnham has said on defense has largely come through his agenda for the reindustrialization of the U.K., explicitly linking it to job creation, skills, and protectionist investment in British firms over reliance on foreign companies.

Chris Hague, director of defense policy for Make UK Defence, said: “The prime minister made a strong case for why the reindustrialization of Britain is necessary to meet the challenge of an increasingly unstable world.”

That emphasis may represent the clearest distinction so far between Burnham and his predecessor.

Rosalind Roberts, director of research at the RUSI defense think tank, said: “There is little evidence that Prime Minister Burnham is going to pivot Labour’s approach on defense,” adding that his key themes — security being a government’s first duty, support for Ukraine, the importance of European defense and a need to focus on defense investment — align closely with his predecessor.

“But with Burnham’s speech at the U.N. and some of the announcements at the Labour Party conference, it looks like the Burnham government will increase the emphasis on viewing defense and security issues through a domestic lens,” she said.

Roberts added that Burnham’s commitment to defense will face its first major test in October, when the budget is expected to show how the government will fill the Defence Investment Plan’s funding gap — and whether Burnham is prepared to cut spending elsewhere to pay for it.

Fonte: War in Ukraine – POLITICO