Defence Spending vs Tax Cuts?

Baroness (Pauline) Neville-Jones has issued a chilling warning about the ‘growing’ security threats and has called for the UK to spend 2.5% of GDP — even at the expense of tax cuts.

It’s a call to be taken seriously. She is a Conservative peer and former civil servant who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee in the 1990s, served on the National Security Council, and was Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism in 2010-2011. She was also the first to argue that the UK needed to help Ukraine after Russia's 2014 attack on the Crimea. Ministry of Defence officials scoffed at the idea that Russia might have grander ambitions in the region. Now, the ongoing war makes that look recklessly optimistic.

In addition to Ukraine, there is currently an active war in Gaza, which could even escalate to Iran and elsewhere, plus over 35 major armed conflicts in Africa (including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. . And China is throwing its military weight around in the South China Sea, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Things are now striking very close to home. UK and European supply chains are being disrupted in the Red Sea and Straits of Hormuz. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has warned that the threat to vital UK internet systems is ‘enduring and significant’, with a rise in aggressive state-sponsored cyber-terrorism. And other western nations face the same threats.

It does indeed look like a very dangerous world. So are we doing enough about it? The international comparisons suggest not. For the first time in its history, the Russian government’s 2024 budget will set military and defence spending at 6% of GDP — more than goes on social spending. At the 14th National People’s Congress last month, China announced it would be raising its military budget by 7.2%. Not only does the world look very unsafe, it looks increasingly unsafe.

And all this is coming at the worst possible time. Donald Trump, who looks set to re-enter the White House at the end of the year, has already announced that he would turn off US support to Ukraine, and he has hinted that the US will not even suppose NATO countries unless they start spending more on their own protection. Meanwhile, the UK (like many other European countries) is deep in debt, thanks to a string of governments (including Conservative ones) that have put tax-and-spend and costly regulation ahead of entrepreneurship and economic growth,

Given the geopolitical and military threats around, that is not a great position to be in. And now, senior Conservatives like Neville-Jones are talking about strengthening defence even if it means sacrificing any growth-stimulating tax cuts. If only our governments had listened to the pro-growth, low-tax, balanced budget arguments much earlier.