A co-author of Britain’s strategic defence review has joined criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership on military policy, warning of a “bizarre” lack of urgency in defence planning.
Fiona Hill, a former chief adviser to the White House on Russia, echoed the concerns of George Robertson, her co-author with Gen Richard Barrons on the strategic defence review (SDR), over what he had called the prime minister’s “corrosive complacency”.
Robertson, a peer and former head of Nato, has publicly aired his frustration at the government’s failure to come forward with its 10-year spending plans for defence following publication of the SDR last June.
Elaborating further on Tuesday night in a speech in Salisbury, Wiltshire, he accused “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism” and warned that “we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”.
Robertson also disclosed he had a discussion with the defence secretary, John Healey, on Monday about his intervention. He said Healey was “extremely angry with me”.
“They don’t want these headlines but sometimes you have to say it,” Robertson said. “That’s what I said last night to John. I believe my country is in danger.”
Of the government’s delay in providing details of its defence spending plans, he added: “I don’t understand it any more than you … No doubt it will come out, in, as they constantly say, due course.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the suggestion public spending cuts may be necessary to fund defence prompted Diane Abbott, the Labour MP, to accuse Robertson of putting “guns before butter”, adding that Labour would lose votes to the Greens if Starmer followed the peer’s advice.
“We have already slashed foreign aid, and to cut welfare to spend on armaments is appalling,” she said. “People are going to start to wonder why they are voting Labour in the first place. It is not going to help us electorally.”
Fiona Hill: ‘We don’t have the sense of urgency, which is kind of bizarre really given everything that’s happening.’ Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
But speaking to the Guardian, Hill, who worked for Donald Trump in his first term, said she believed No 10’s lack of urgency in putting Britain on a war footing was “bizarre”.
Hill said that Robertson was “basically just trying to say, we need to have more movement now. If you get that sense of urgency then action will follow but we don’t have the sense of urgency, which is kind of bizarre really given everything that’s happening …
“What George is saying, very bluntly, is there is basically a lack of resolute leadership on this. Because everybody’s worried about votes and, you know, reactions, and all of this on the left and on the right.
“The political situation, you know, for the [Labour] party, is not good, but as George has been saying, this is a UK strategic defence review and, frankly, if anybody wants to make political points, I would suggest that it’s shame on them. Big time.”
She added: “I think we can see [the risk], just look at what is happening in the Gulf. You think we couldn’t get a nice drone on the Shard [building in London]?”
Barrons told the BBC’s Today programme: “There’s an enormous gap between where we have to be to keep the country safe in the world we now live in, and where we actually are.”
“The US cavalry is not coming to bail us out now,” he said, adding that the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were “undernourished”.
Hill said the government’s failure to come forward with its spending plans for defence was leading to a loss of confidence within the British defence sector and among interested financial investors.
She said: “Companies that are British, that have really important armaments and other equipment, are not getting the orders and so they are looking elsewhere and some are folding.
“The City has been standing by – George and Richard have been constantly talking to them – getting ready to put together investment funds and things but if there is no signal from the Ministry of Defence then they will go and do deals with the US, which is always what happens.”
Hill said there was a wider problem that the government had yet to tell the country it needed to build civil defence and resilience in case of war.
John Hutton, a former defence secretary, said he believed the UK had 18 months to show it was properly financing its defence if it were to deter Vladimir Putin from making a military move against British interests.
He called on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to use the flexibility in her fiscal rules to borrow more for defence, as Germany had done.
Hutton said: “I think there’s a significant gap in our credibility in Nato to provide a conventional deterrence to any possible Russian aggression, which I think is now more likely to happen than not.”
Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough, who chairs the cross-party Commons defence select committee, said he was concerned that Robertson had pinpointed the Treasury as being to blame for the delay on announcing the spending plans, and accused its ministers of avoiding appearing before his members.
He said: “Lord Robertson’s public intervention is sobering. It is damning that a man of his stature and experience has to speak out publicly to get his message heard. When it comes to defence, the government’s rhetoric promising action does not yet align with reality.
“Lord Robertson has pointed at the Treasury as a blocker. Treasury ministers have repeatedly refused to appear before the defence committee, giving every impression that they are trying to avoid accountability.”
A government spokesperson said the SDR was “backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war, with a total of over £270bn being invested across this parliament”.