The borrowers
As early as 1945 the Royal Navy’s Pacific Fleet was forced to “borrow” equipment and supplies from the US Navy. Despite the fact that the anglophobe head of the USN Admiral King tried to stop it happening, the Americans were typically generous. .
For a long time since then the UK Armed Forces have been known by their American allies as “The Borrowers”. We turn up to stand beside them with too few people, and too little equipment, much of it years out of date.
Now the National Audit Office (NAO) calculates the Ministry of Defence’s budget is short by £17 billion for new weapons and equipment over the next 10 years, and the worst case scenario is more like £30 billion.
This is just not sustainable even with the government’s meaningless “promise” to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP “when economic and fiscal conditions allow.” That is a promise not worth having.
The UK cannot afford an army that can fight on the continent, an ocean going Navy, an airforce that can project force over large distances and a permanent nuclear deterrent. At the moment it has cut all four so much that they are all appallingly weak and there is another defence review on the way.
But no government will grasp the nettle and admit that the UK is not a global defence power and has not been for decades. Something has to give.
Let us hope we don’t have to find out this lesson the hard way.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media