July 8, 2024 - 11:45am

There is an argument to be made that our new Labour government, having tacked Right to woo the British electorate, is merely a more competent Conservative administration. When it comes to foreign policy, this would be a welcome development. The past half-decade’s churn of prime ministers left the country committed to maximalist foreign policy goals, inheriting a Johnsonian Global Britain boosterism regarding the UK’s place in the world that was, in reality, far beyond our material capabilities.

This week’s Nato summit is the first major event for our new Labour government. It will also be the first opportunity to present a scaled-down British strategic vision to both our quietly relieved US sponsor and our closest European allies, which new Defence Secretary John Healey has promised will be the focus of a coming wave of bilateral defence agreements.

But the welcome shift in focus also raises questions about defence spending and capabilities which may have unpalatable answers. Defence of the North Atlantic sea lanes is a logical and vital British responsibility, but does the Royal Navy’s denuded surface fleet maintain the capacity to do so in the event of war? What, indeed, is the strategic argument for keeping our costly but all-but-undefended carriers at all? Winnowing down Britain’s grand defence commitments is an unavoidable objective; but the implicit consequence is that in any future confrontation with China, Britain will be a bystander.

This may not be an unpopular outcome with the British public, seemingly tired of risky international grandstanding. While David Lammy’s proposed strategic mission — his so-called “progressive realism” — may be woolly and incoherent, Healy’s more modest proposal has the virtue of starting from Britain’s limited material capabilities, and working out what can realistically be achieved from this basis. This is why Healey pledged, in an interview last year, to scale down Johnson’s “Indo-Pacific tilt”, the grand rebalancing of Britain’s strategic focus to the far edge of the world. “There needs to be a realism about military commitments into the Indo-Pacific,” Healey said. “Our armed forces are ill-served by leaders who pretend that Britain can do everything, everywhere.”

Healey’s analysis is absolutely correct, and taps into a vein of American foreign policy thinking that presents a European focus on the Pacific as a costly and ultimately ineffective distraction from our own continent’s security. Indeed, American analysts such as Elbridge Colby, tipped to be Donald Trump’s national security advisor, have long warned that the European fad for the Far East threatens to be a strategic drag on Washington rather than an asset.

As Colby told the New Statesman last week: “The UK has to borrow US aircraft for its aircraft carrier […] I’m not trying to be a jerk, but who’s going to defend that aircraft carrier? Who’s going to sustain it? […] If you look at the realistic situation in the UK and the state of the armed forces and spending prognosis and reindustrialisation, and you look at the UK’s ability to project power, [the Indo-Pacific tilt] is just not realistic.”

Labour’s new defence vision, which cuts Britain’s role to its straitened cloth, makes a virtue of necessity; but a new role as a regional Northwest European power, while necessary, is undeniably a diminution in global standing. The age of Global Britain is over. Under Labour, in defence terms at least, our solely European future may have just begun.


Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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