{"id":22160,"date":"2026-04-14T13:58:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T13:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/?p=22160"},"modified":"2026-04-14T13:58:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T13:58:52","slug":"public-support-uk-defence-readiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/2026\/04\/public-support-uk-defence-readiness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Public: The Missing Piece in UK Readiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the assessment is that we must increase\u00a0defence\u00a0spending, the question\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0just how\u00a0do we do\u00a0it\u00a0militarily,\u00a0it is how to do it politically.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lord George Robertson\u2019s scathing attack<\/a> on the UK\u2019s defence capabilities has sent alarm bells ringing across the UK\u2019s foreign policy and security community. The comments by the ex-NATO Chief and lead of the UK\u2019s recent Strategic Defence Review are uncharacteristically forthright and public-facing. They are the comments of a traditional insider exasperated at the UK\u2019s ability, or lack thereof, to respond to emerging global threats.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And while his accusations of Treasury \u2018vandalism\u2019 of UK defence, \u2018corrosive complacency\u2019 within government and warnings that \u2018our national security is in peril\u2019 are intended to shock government into action, there is clearly truth to the argument that the UK urgently needs to invest further in its own defence. The very public difficulties of sending a warship to Cyprus and the depleted size of the UK army speak to the major challenges facing UK defence at a time of growing global insecurity.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are\u00a0a number of\u00a0practical challenges, from procurement to investment, which are undermining the UK\u2019s defensive capabilities. But as much as anything, the challenge is political. This is something Robertson begins to scratch the surface of when he declared \u2018<\/span>we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget\u2019.\u00a0Defence\u00a0is expensive. And if the threats are as real as everyone says they are, then some\u00a0very difficult, very real tradeoffs\u00a0will have to be made.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is that the public\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0ready for that. Our research<\/a> last year found that Britons felt safer than at any point since 2017. When we ask Britons about feelings of\u00a0safety\u00a0they talk about knife crime, the cost of living, and very occasionally about terrorism. They very rarely mention Russia,\u00a0China\u00a0or the Middle East. These international challenges feel far removed, distant from their everyday concerns about energy prices and their local schools and hospitals.\u00a0<\/span>O<\/span>f course, the UK\u2019s ability to continue to deliver all these things is contingent on a stable and secure international environment, but that is not a simple nor exciting message to deliver.<\/span><\/p>\n

So while Britons broadly support increasing defence spending, our research consistently shows that they are unwilling to make the necessary trade offs,<\/span>\u00a0either in the form of cuts to welfare, health or education, or through increases to their taxes <\/span>to fund it.\u00a0That\u00a0puts our democratically accountable leaders in a tough position.\u00a0\u00a0They have\u00a0very little\u00a0fiscal or political headroom. Certainly not enough to fund the vast and rapid increases in\u00a0defence\u00a0spending that military leaders would like to see.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So\u00a0while Robertson and others are right to call out the need to invest more heavily in\u00a0defence, it is important to do so with an understanding of the politics of the situation. The politics of a government desperately fighting off Reform, whose traditional voter\u00a0base\u00a0are not only instinctively nervous about\u00a0defence\u00a0spending but who are\u00a0strong\u00a0supporters\u00a0of areas that would need to be cut.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not to let the\u00a0government off the hook.\u00a0Rather\u00a0it is to say we must accept the political reality of the situation.\u00a0If the assessment is that we must increase\u00a0defence\u00a0spending, the question\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0just how\u00a0do we do\u00a0it\u00a0militarily,\u00a0it is how to do it politically. Here there are a whole raft of options, of which Robertson\u2019s SDR\u2019s proposals of a \u2018National Conversation\u2019 about\u00a0defence\u00a0are part. It requires honest and frank conversations with the public, framed in the language that works – language such as resilience rather than conflict, conveyed by people they respect (not just military leaders who are assumed to be\u00a0self interested), and via platforms they actually engage with. That\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0be easy.\u00a0It will require a mindset shift in how we talk about national security and creativity in how we communicate it.\u00a0But rather than just berating leaders for not taking national security seriously, it is time\u00a0defence\u00a0woke up to the political realities, and supported government in this mammoth mindset shifting task.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the assessment is that we must increase\u00a0defence\u00a0spending, the question\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0just how\u00a0do we do\u00a0it\u00a0militarily,\u00a0it is how to do it politically.\u00a0 Lord George Robertson\u2019s scathing attack on the UK\u2019s defence capabilities has sent alarm bells ringing across the UK\u2019s foreign policy and security community. The comments by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":21552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133,169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-uk-perspectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bfpg.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}