‘Making sure it’s worth it’

Defence has often been an uncomfortable policy area for some Labour members. I myself grew up being taken on CND demos in the 1980s and marched against the Iraq war in my 20s. I have never been a pacifist, but I have always been, and remain, instinctually dovish. 

One of my favourite anti-war songs of all time is the beautiful and haunting Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello. The song breaks with the traditional certainty of the genre with the opening line asking the question “Is it worth it?” and genuinely exploring the tensions between the difference that defence can make to a working class town and lives and what it is that is being built in those factories. The song (as would be expected by an anti-war song) comes down on the side of ‘no’ but it does not do so without a sense of what might be lost. 

I like this subtlety and this ability to think beyond the black and white of a question where you are usually expected to take a position and fight for it fiercely – giving no quarter – or humanity –  to the other side. But the truth is that pacifists are not all naive hippies and those who support increased defence spending are not all heartless warmongers. Being dovish over the war in Iran and supporting Starmer as he has kept the UK out of the fighting does not mean I believe the action doesn’t support the argument that Britain needs to be much better able to defend herself. 

Politics and governing have to be grounded in the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. And the traditional international umbrellas we have relied on – a stable US ally,  a strong NATO – have shown themselves to be far more fragile than we believed. Relying on these made being dovish in the UK an easier choice. While we thought we were able to rely on the protection of others, it was a lot easier to say that building up our own capability was not ‘worth it’. Even the Tories – traditionally a far more hawkish party – were able to slash £90 billion from defence with little outcry. 

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Meanwhile, aggressors like Putin have been attacking the borders of our continent for over a decade. Russian submarines, cyber warfare and other subversion measures continue to threaten the UK at a level below direct warfare but enough to undermine our security and make clear where and how we are vulnerable. 

So the question for a Labour government is how to fulfil our first duty of ensuring the security of the realm while also ensuring that we focus on our purpose of ensuring that people are able to use their labour in fulfilling jobs that enable them to live a good life. 

The Defence Secretary John Healey has laid out how Labour is approaching this in an exclusive piece for LabourList today. In it he draws on Labour’s Bevinite tradition outlining the twin pillars of strong alliances and strong workers. He outlines the government’s ‘back British’ approach – investing in British firms with unionised workers offering good, secure, well paid work. 

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I wish we lived in a world where I could answer the question ‘is it worth it?’ with a firm ‘no’. I wish we lived in a world where spending billions on weapons, drones, helicopters and artillery didn’t feel like a necessary response to the aggression of autocrats. But I can’t in good conscience argue that we do. 

So, given that, I want to know that we are investing in line with other values I hold dear. That we are investing this money in British firms with unionised jobs. That we are investing in the future of working class communities. That we are using this spending to both pursue the defence of the realm and to give people more security in their own lives. That we are giving our young people future skills that will work in this industry but are also transferable should we reach a world where we can turn our swords into ploughshares. And we should be constantly vigilant about who we sell these weapons to and how we influence and control how they are – and are not – used by others. 

Labour should never allow our patriotism to edge into jingoism. Any military action must always be able to answer the question ‘is it worth it?’ and I know there will rarely be an easy and obvious answer to that question. My instinct – particularly on aggressive rather than defensive action – is that there will need to be a very high bar to answer that question with ‘yes’. 

But having been convinced that in this insecure world investing in our defence – rather than rushing to aggression – is worth it, my next question must always then be ‘how do we do this in a Labour way?’ It is an answer to this that John Healey has laid out for us today.

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