Defence: an unserious nation

By Richard North - June 13, 2026

The resignation of John Healey and others from the Labour defence ministerial team have brought the legacy media defence correspondents and sundry pundits out to play.

But, to illustrate once again that we are no longer a serious nation, much of the media emphasis has been on the political ramifications of the resignations rather than the detail of the (as yet unpublished) Defence Investment Plan and the Strategic Defence Review that spawned it.

As the situation now stands, the ball is with the prime minister, responding to a soft-focus interview by the BBC which has him seeking to justify his decisions on defence spending and insisting that he had made “hard-edged” choices, including getting every department to make cuts to pay for defence.

What is entirely missing from this discourse is the central fact that any discussion about long-term defence spending is entirely premature until we have settled the debate on the nature of the threat(s), the way we should respond to them and then how the armed forces and other organs of state (and civil society) should be structured to implement that response.

That, of course, is the job that should have been done by the Strategic Defence Review but, even at the time of publication, it looked a dismal production and, as time has passed, its deficiencies have become more and more apparent.

At the heart of the problem is the preferred fiction that Russia is our enemy to be, and that we must prepare for war with the Russian Federation at some time in the unspecified future, most likely on foreign turf – possibly the Baltic states or the High Arctic.

Others might suggest, as I pointed out in my review at the time, that the military should be gearing to deal with home-grown sectarian violence, on the lines of the Northern Ireland “Troubles” – something brought into focus after the recent disturbances in Northern Ireland – and then there is the question of dealing with the ongoing invasion of thousands of military-aged head choppers and throat slitters.

Given that Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terror legislation has said violence by newly arrived migrants was “becoming more relevant” to national security, after the recent gruesome attack by the Sudanese asylum seeker in Belfast.

Hall argues that the attack had been “extraordinarily destabilising” and had “huge ramifications” with widespread violence on the city’s streets and the homes of “black and brown” people being targeted by mobs.

That, at the very least should give pause for thought as to whether the military needs to be configured (at least in part) to deal with widespread civil disorder in support of the civil power – not only in Northern Ireland but also on the mainland.

But even if we do accept the fiction that the military should be organised and equipped to deal with a threat from Russia, the comments of the departing minister for the armed forces, Al Carns – a highly decorated former officer in the Royal Marines (pictured).

In his resignation letter to Starmer, he wrote of having watched, as a Marine, what war looks like now, he had since spoken to those who have seen it “up close” in Ukraine.

The lesson, he said, “is uncomfortable and it is unambiguous”, pointing out that “the character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with”. We are, he complained, “still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one. Platforms that cost billions can be defeated by systems that cost thousands”.

Where is goes slightly off the rails is in then asserting that “any serious Defence Investment Plan has to start from that reality”, but that really is putting the cart before the horse. It is for the Strategic Defence Review process to deal with such matters, a task which it has singularly failed to do.

Nevertheless, he goes on to say that, “While I had no hand in the Defence Investment Plan, that distance does allow me to say plainly that it is not built for the threat we face”. It is, he says, neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded. “We are asking our Armed Forces to operate in a more dangerous world on a budget written for a calmer one”.

Here, he is in danger of confusing the issues. He tells us that he has “sat in the rooms, seen the assessments, and spoken to the commanders who will be asked to do more with less”. Thus, he declares: “I cannot in good conscience stand at the dispatch box and defend a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task”. Tellingly, he adds: “A serious country funds its defence to meet the threat it actually faces, not the threat it wishes it faced”.

But it is not primarily a question of funding. A serious country first identifies the threats it is likely to face (or actually faces), and then goes through the process I have described before, as a final stage, calculating the funding needed.

Here, though, Carns is alluding to an element of wishful thinking in the British military. I picked this up in the context of the introduction of the Ajax, retailing the myopia of a middle-ranking Army officer – one of those who is so stupid that even his brother officers must have noticed.

“The way in which the British Army wishes to employ this platform (the Ajax) and the way in which we want to fight, is not the way in which the conflict in Ukraine is currently being conducted”, he says.

This fool then adds: “We would like to try and avoid getting ourselves into the situation where we are in trenches, unable to move, with drones consistently overhead”, declaring that the army would want to remain mobile “without getting bogged down”.

Interestingly Carns develops his theme on X, stating the obvious – that the next war won’t be won by armies, navies or air forces alone – not that wars ever are.

It will, he says, “be won by the country whose 19-year-olds can code, whose factories can build drones in weeks not years, and whose grid stays on when someone tries to switch it off.

“Industry, Society. Economy. That’s the fight now”, he adds – perhaps not as well versed in the history of modern warfare as he should be. But he’s right in saying: “We’re not ready”. And, he avers: “we’re not being honest about what getting ready will cost”. But then, neither can he be. Until he’s defined force structures and objectives, there’s no way of knowing what the bill will come to.

Looking for other platforms, Carns then goes to The Times, appearing via that medium on X again, courtesy of defence correspondent Larisa Brown, saying that “the current defence investment plan has too much focus on sophisticated systems that deliver in ten years and not enough on uncrewed weaponry, such as kamikaze drones”. He complains “Everything arrived too late”.

I hate to harp on, but this really isn’t a DIP problem – it is and remains a definition problem that should have been sorted by the Strategic Defence Review – and wasn’t.

In Brown’s piece, based on an interview with Carns, she writes under the headline: “Al Carns warns UK looking at last war instead of readying for next”, with the sub-head stating: “The former armed forces minister says the investment plan is too slow and ‘not serious’. He says the UK risks losing its relevance on the world stage”.

As to that, I think that ship has already sailed (which is more than you can say for Royal Navy warships), but here he goes again saying that the DIP was “not serious”, lacked innovation, funding and lessons learnt from Ukraine. That, though, seems the best we can do for a defence debate – showing up the lack of coherence and clear thinking in the defence establishment.

Carns does say that some “courageous” decisions needed to be made to “get rid of the legacy kit” and replace them with technologies seen on the battlefield against Russia – one would like to think he is referring to Ajax – but that is as much detail as we’re allowed.

Yet, we really need to go back to the drawing board. Even the lessons from the current situation in Ukraine might not hold good, given the speed of technological evolution and operational development. We need to set up systems which can cope with this volatility, keeping our armed forces relevant as the nature of the threats change.

We all know that this isn’t going to happen. As an unserious nation, we have lost the ability to do serious things. Defence is only one of them.