There is another of those rather worrying articles in the FT about the state of Britain's defences. Apparently the nuclear deterrence alone eats 14% of all defence spending, which is quite outrageous for just four subs.
That percentage seems set to rise as we are building 4 replacement subs and patching up the existing ones at the same time, while developing new nuclear warheads, not to mention designing and building new attack subs too.
Leaving aside the worry that building and maintaining such a nuclear powered and armed fleet entails a huge military/industrial complex, with thousands of highly skilled staff, factories, facilities and capacity which we have to maintain just so we can replace submarines every 25 years or so. The worse worry is that the nuclear deterrence eats into every other aspect of defence spending because it is so costly and can never be compromised.
Like the triple lock on state pensions once the continuously at sea nuclear deterrent was invented it immediately became political suicide to tinker with it. You could I am sure save money by just putting nuclear cruise missiles on attack subs and RAF planes. It would be a brave enemy which risked one of those surviving, but that will never happen.
Perhaps then we should learn French instead.
Because France has a defence budget around 10% lower than ours. Yet it has a larger Air force, a much larger Army and a continuously at sea nuclear deterrent which only eats 11% of its budget. Not only that but military pensions come out of the defence budget in France and they don’t in the UK.
So perhaps we could send a delegation of French speaking economists and defence experts to ask the French how they do it?
The UK is in the middle, yet again, of trying to decide whether to massively increase defence spending. Something it really needs to do, and which will be painful. But it will be painful and pointless if the money just soaks away into the current inefficient system.
The golden rule for increasing budgets is that you have to reform the institution getting the money, or it will just disappear into existing inefficient ways of working, bolster all departments by a little, rather than the ones that need it by a lot and productivity will not improve.
The money will achieve next to nothing.
So maybe the new Chancellor who let us not forget, resigned as Defence Secretary over the government’s refusal to increase defence spending by “enough”, might like to propose a compromise?
You can have more money once you are as efficient and productive as the French.
From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Have we entered a new phase in pragmatic politics with Andy Burnham (AB) taking over as PM.
On Newsnight recently an advocate of Stop the Oil supported new drilling in the North Sea, subject to the government taking control of the price and usage by the UK, thus not being battered by market price fluctuations, we have a genuine attempt to solve rough sleeping and a suggested sensible comparison, by Jonty, to our defence spending.
AB is a breath of fresh air, someone who cares and is prepared to make decisions. Simple pragmatic politics.
It is early days but he has made a good start which may encourage others to support and encourage him. Can we fix things - YES WE CAN!!
Jonty, please keep up the radical thinking.
In terms of military spending, you make a very good point. Before getting increased spending, the Ministry of Defence should demonstrate that they are using the money they already get more effectively