Where’s the defence?

Do you remember Alan Hansen? Whenever a goal was scored, that football commentator would utter the lapidary phrase in the title with real exasperation in his nice Scottish voice.

Looking at Britain’s budget unveiled yesterday by the Chancellor with the oft-mispronounced name, I asked – myself, since no one else was around – the same rhetorical question. My uncouth interlocutor replied with an obscenity I don’t dare repeat here.

Announcing a £2.5 billion reduction in defence spending, Mr Hunt boasted that it’s “already more than 2 per cent of GDP . [Moreover, it] will rise to 2.5 per cent as soon as economic conditions allow”.

Permit me to translate the open-ended promise in the second sentence: economic conditions will never allow it, and defence spending will never rise until it’s too late. In general, Mr Hunt ought to be reminded that defence of the realm from enemies foreign and domestic should be the only non-negotiable part of the budget.

Any responsible government should first decide how much it needs to spend on keeping the nation safe and only then ponder how to distribute whatever is left. And the question of how much is enough should be answered on the basis of the geopolitical situation, not “economic conditions”.

The benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP is what NATO countries have undertaken to spend under normal circumstances. I’ve highlighted the last three words to emphasise that today’s circumstances are far from being normal.

A war is raging in Europe, with neo-fascist invaders openly proclaiming their far-reaching designs on at least the eastern half of Europe, where most countries are NATO members. Putin and his propagandists make no bones about identifying NATO as its real adversary.

Elementary responsibility, common sense and historical experience demand that aggressive dictators be taken at their word – unlike our own politicians they tend to say what they mean and mean what they say.

Under such abnormal circumstances, the figure of 2 per cent of GDP is the barest of minimums that should only serve as a point of departure. And yes, by spending 2.07 per cent of GDP on defence, the UK is regrettably one of only 10 NATO countries meeting that puny requirement.

It’s instructive to see who the other nine such members are. The US apart, they are Poland (her proportion of 3.9 per cent is NATO’s highest), Greece, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

Notice anything they all have in common? Correct. They all suffered, or were barely able to repel, Soviet domination.

In 1944-1949 Greece was torn apart by a civil war started by the communists with the Soviet Union’s blessing. The government, helped by Britain and America, prevailed in the end, but only just.

And Finland suffered Bolshevik cannibalism twice, first in her own 1918 civil war, then following the Soviet aggression in 1939-1940. In 1918 the Finnish ‘Whites’ routed the Red menace, and in 1940 Finland managed to defend their sovereignty at a cost of almost 10 per cent of her territory.

All the other countries on the list of NATO ‘big spenders’ were either parts or satellites of the Soviet Union. Since that was only a generation ago, the fond memories are fresh in their minds, and they are hastily arming themselves against the blight they are too familiar with, if in a different guise.

By contrast, Western European countries, Britain included, clearly don’t feel the same sense of urgency. Their leaders make all sorts of bellicose statements, but keep their collective hand firmly in their pocket. When it comes to defence, that is.

Chancellor Hunt and the government he fronts have other priorities, and there their generosity knows no bounds. While reducing defence spending by £2.5 billion, they are increasing NHS spending by exactly the same amount.

One of Mr Hunt’s predecessors at 11 Downing Street, Nigel Lawson, said in 1992 that “the NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion”. The God of that religion is athirst, demanding ever greater sacrifices. Billions after billions are tossed into its voracious innards, where they disappear without a trace or any noticeable effect. But religious piety can’t be measured in any monetary units.

Now, Mr Hunt and just about everyone in government know this perfectly well. To repeat Jean-Claude Juncker’s aphorism for which I absolved him of all his sins, they all know what to do. They just don’t know how to get re-elected once they’ve done it. And that’s all that matters.

Mr Hunt knows as well as everyone in Parliament that failure to increase NHS spending and especially any attempt to reduce it will be immediately punished at the ballot box. However, leaving the realm defenceless in the face of the direst threat in 78 years is something else indeed.

Electoral chastisement will come only if Russia acts on her threat to attack NATO, which may or may not happen, and almost certainly won’t happen before the next election. So Sunak and Hunt are prepared to risk our national survival for the outside, not to say non-existent, chance of staying in power.

Other than that, the new budget points to another choice the government made. The Tories have two ways of approaching the electoral campaign. One, they can effectively say to the voters: “Our policies are drastically different from Labour’s. Vote for us if you agree they aren’t just different but better.” Two, they can say: “Our policies are the same as Labour’s. Vote for us because you won’t get anything different anyway.”

The government is clearly opting for the second strategy. Other than reducing the national insurance tax from 10 per cent to eight, the new budget contains nothing that a Labour chancellor wouldn’t happily sign his name to.

By freezing income tax thresholds, the government is effectively increasing the overall tax burden, a ruinous decision camouflaged with the odd nip and tuck here and there. “Lower taxes mean higher growth,” said Mr Hunt, again showing his familiarity with the sentiment behind Juncker’s quip.

However, he spent the previous weeks dropping hints that he didn’t wish to spook the markets by precipitous tax cuts, the way the hapless Truss and Kwarteng had done. That’s dishonest.

Truss and Kwarteng committed an economic faux pas not by cutting taxes, but by doing so without also cutting public spending. Hunt, on the other hand, is presiding over an economy bending under the burden of promiscuous spending and extortionate taxation.

The attempt to out-Labour Labour will get its comeuppance at the next election, with the Tories almost guaranteed to be reduced to the status of a fringe party, sort of like the Greens. Britain will suffer too, with Labour Full Strength adding its own touches to the Tories’ Labour Lite policies.

One way or another, Britain’s armed forces will continue their descent to the size of London’s Metropolitan Police, with only a slightly bigger arsenal of heavy weapons. Let’s just hope Putin isn’t good at doing sums.