Donald Trump’s isolationism and Vladimir Putin’s menace leaves post-Brexit Britain in a delicate position. While the combination of US disengagement from Europe and the reality of Russian aggression has forced a reappraisal of security across the continent, Britain’s half-in, half-out status makes for complications.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, wanted to showcase Britain’s credentials as a European military leader on Thursday, first with a visit to the Barrow shipyard where nuclear submarines are built and then to look into a meeting of 30-plus military heads, mostly from Europe, as they discuss how to create a post-war stabilisation force for Ukraine.
Yet the message was somewhat undermined by the EU’s announcement a day earlier that it would set up a €150bn (£125bn) defence investment lending scheme, from which the UK (and the US) would simply be excluded, because it is not a member and does not have an associate or special status like Norway or Ukraine.
In reality, the apparent bar is not quite so serious, as long as the two sides agree a defence and security pact soon. Labour has been pushing for a defence treaty with the bloc since before the election, and the hope is that negotiations will conclude in time for an EU-UK summit in May, which would give the UK partial access to the scheme.
The initial EU proposal – pushed hard by France, despite close Anglo-French working over the Ukraine stabilisation force – is that British manufacturers will then only be able to access 35% of the money available. That proportion is not set, however, and a successful negotiation may see an increase for the UK, or some other exception.
It will be a test for Labour, which has brought some sanity to the UK’s relationship with the EU but not otherwise sought to redraw the post-Brexit settlement. Under the Conservatives, the UK military pulled out of missions like the EU’s EUFOR peacekeeping mission in Bosnia amid fears that British soldiers would have to wear an operational badge with an EU flag on.
A key element of Labour’s forthcoming defence review was always going to be developing the arms industry to promote economic growth, even before the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared last month that Washington was no longer “primarily focused” on defending Europe and Trump began his telephone diplomacy with Putin, with the two men discussing the fate of Ukraine.
The numbers working in defence are not necessarily large – 147,500, according to the ADS trade body – but 70% of defence jobs are outside London and the south-east. Manufacturing sites also make a critical contribution to local economies, in shipyards like Barrow or Rosyth on the Forth in Scotland, or at airfields such as Warton and Samlesbury in Lancashire, and trade unions heavily invested in their success.
But the events of last month have given the European defence effort a far greater urgency. Though Britain has always split its procurement between the UK, US and partners in Europe, the sight of Trump stopping military aid to Ukraine and halting intelligence sharing with almost no notice has not been attractive.
High-tech US weapons given to Ukraine such as the Himars rocket launcher or the F-16 fighter jet appear to have lost key elements of functionality. In the alarm that followed, the makers of the US F-35 jet were even forced to put out a statement saying “there is no kill switch” that the US could operate remotely at a moment’s notice, though a more realistic concern is that without continuing US logistics and software support, an F-35 would become unusable quickly.
The history of Anglo-American military cooperation is so long and deep that it hard to imagine it falling apart in a crisis even with Trump in the White House. But long-term military planning is also about contingency and what Britain needs is to deepen its security and defence industrial relationship with Europe not as an alternative but in parallel with its relationship with the US.
