As if Rachel Reeves hasn’t accomplished sufficient harm – now she’s giving Putin simply what he desires | Politics | News | EUROtoday

The warnings got here with all of the subtlety of an air raid siren when the Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton stood earlier than the good and the great on the Royal United Services Institute and professed nothing wanting doom. Britain confronted threats so extreme that everybody wanted to be able to “serve” and “if necessary to fight”. The stony-faced Marshal warned attendees that the risk was “more dangerous than I have known during my career”.

Steady on, outdated boy. If we do not see him subsequent week wandering round Paddington in a sandwich board studying “The End Is Nigh”, we’ll name it a fortunate escape. Except, fairly annoyingly, he occurs to be proper.

The invasion of Ukraine, which itself got here after Crimea, which got here after Georgia, ought to have been a fairly massive trace that Putin won’t be terribly fascinated by diplomatic niceties. Donald Trump, in his personal trend, has been harping for years that NATO ought to splash extra cash on defence, and even the Germans are dusting off their Panzers.

Yet right here in Britain we have been systematically dismembering our armed forces with the identical sadistic glee as a youngster plucking the legs off a spider. The military has seen nearly 4 in each 10 fundamental battle tanks shelved. And boots on the bottom? That’s right down to file lows as effectively. We face cyber assaults a number of instances a yr, we have seen the Russians poisoning individuals in Salisbury, and our response seems to be crossing our fingers and hoping for one of the best.

And the Navy? We’re an island nation, and we seem like permitting our fleet to fade just like the morning mist on a heat day. We now have seven frigates; in 2010, we had seventeen. The British Army is now predicted to be smaller than at any time since 1793, after we fought the French with muskets and tricorn hats.

We are a lion with no tooth, no claws, and more and more, no roar.

Henry Kissinger, who knew a factor or two about energy, as soon as noticed that “diplomacy is the art of restraining power”. But right here is the inconvenient reality that appears to elude successive waves of ministers: you can’t restrain what you don’t possess.

Diplomacy solely works when backed by one thing actual. Either a robust financial system that makes sanctions sting (we should not have one) or a army that makes tyrants suppose twice earlier than making an attempt it on (ditto).

Rachel Reeves, bless her, has fallen into exactly the identical entice as those that got here earlier than her. She is balancing the books as we speak by mortgaging our safety tomorrow. It is fiscal prudence as efficiency artwork: look how accountable we’re, slashing defence while Putin spends ever-increasing quantities of Russia’s GDP arming to the tooth and huge chunks of presidency spending circulation into his struggle machine.

We, in the meantime, dither over whether or not we are able to attain 2.5% in time. At this fee, we will be defending Britain with a strongly worded letter and a dozen Boy Scouts armed with conkers.

Successive governments, Tory and Labour alike, have handled defence as an inconvenient funds line, one thing to be squeezed when the sums don’t add up. This will not be statecraft. This is accountancy masquerading as technique, the political equal of foregoing your home insurance coverage to pay for a weekend in Benidorm.

Britain as soon as dominated the waves, however now she will be able to barely patrol them. We as soon as fielded armies that made tyrants quake, however now we wrestle to subject a single brigade with out raiding the reserves and calling in favours. This will not be managed decline; it’s strategic incompetence wearing a hi-vis jacket and carrying a clipboard.

And when the reckoning comes, not if, however when, we will uncover that you simply can’t negotiate from a place of weak point, irrespective of how intelligent your diplomats or how costly your legal professionals. Wars should not gained by strongly worded communiqués from the Foreign Office. They are gained by ships, tanks, troops, and the nationwide will to make use of them.

Rachel Reeves and her predecessors have confused the ledger with the map. They have mistaken accountancy for statecraft. And when the bear comes knocking, we’ll all pay the butcher’s invoice.