It is no longer considered impolite in Westminster to speak openly of war. The language of necessity, resilience, readiness, deterrence, has returned to the front bench, accompanied by the requisite talk of ‘hard choices’. When Keir Starmer confirmed in February that a future Labour government would raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, it was presented not as a political gamble but a sober inevitability. ‘Tough on security,’ he said, ‘because we’re serious about government.’ The press noted approvingly that Labour now outflanked the Conservatives on military spending. Most overlooked the deeper significance: the open acceptance that Britain’s future lies not in reversing social collapse but in managing geopolitical conflict. The budget increase will be funded, in part, by reducing the UK’s already diminished international aid budget1 from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of gross national income. The announcement came with a promise of £5 billion in ‘welfare savings’. No new taxes. No cuts to defence. The public will pay for war by going cold, hungry, and underemployed.
This is not new, though the present iteration feels particularly unopposed. British governments have long maintained high military expenditure even in periods of acute social crisis. The postwar Labour government created the NHS, but also maintained conscription, entered the Korean War, and began the British atomic bomb project, all while rationing food and running up war debts. Wilson’s administration committed to the US war in Vietnam behind closed doors2 and quietly maintained Britain’s overseas bases. Blair was the first to understand how a new kind of militarism could coexist with liberal modernity: a politics of war rebranded as humanitarianism, its excesses offset by the language of aid. Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. The bombs fell and the charities followed. He increased military spending, modernised Trident, and committed to NATO’s global reorientation, all while boasting that the Labour government had abolished boom and bust. That his final war was a colonial counter-insurgency in Helmand should not have come as a surprise. It was only ever about markets, access, oil, and prestige.
Corbynism interrupted this consensus, but not for long. In 2015, the election of a lifelong anti-war campaigner to the leadership of the Labour Party felt, to many of us, like a breach in the established order. Corbyn had marched against Iraq, denounced NATO’s expansion, and criticised the arms trade in Parliament. His leadership marked the first time in decades that the Labour front bench included consistent critics of war, occupation, and the military-industrial complex. But that brief insurgency collided with the permanent institutions of the British state: the civil service, the intelligence services, the military, the press. Each took their turn. Corbyn was labelled a security threat, smeared as a terrorist sympathiser, used as target practice by the Parachute Regiment and ridiculed for opposing Trident. His reluctance to endorse NATO’s deterrence doctrine was treated as evidence of dangerous naivety. By the time of the 2019 election, Labour’s manifesto had been neutered. It included support for NATO, a commitment to maintain nuclear weapons, and a vague promise to ‘review’ arms exports. It wasn’t enough. The press crushed him, and Starmer, then still shadow Brexit secretary, stayed mostly silent. He had already made his calculation.
Starmer’s Labour is now defined by its embrace of order. The defence pledge is only the most explicit example. His project is not to restore public services, but to restore state legitimacy. That legitimacy, in the British case, is always built on a foundation of militarism. The public must be made to believe that the state is capable, even if it cannot house the homeless or reduce hospital waiting lists. Hence the reappearance of RAF flyovers, defence industry briefings, and visits to nuclear submarines. Labour presents this as fiscal responsibility. But what it reveals is the ideological structure of the British state itself: a state that will let schools collapse and disabled people go hungry, but will never allow its armed forces to be seen as underfunded. The military budget is not an exception to austerity; it is the clearest expression of what austerity is for.
It’s worth remembering that Britain’s last sustained increase in defence spending did not follow 9/11, but came after the 2008 financial crisis. Even as councils were closing libraries and hospitals were cutting staff, the Ministry of Defence maintained major procurement programmes, including investment in Trident renewal and the expansion of drone warfare capabilities. Officially, defence budgets were being reduced, part of the wider austerity agenda, but core projects remained insulated. The logic, though rarely stated, was Keynesian: military spending could stimulate demand, protect domestic industries, and preserve Britain’s strategic posture. That the same investment might have gone into insulating homes, expanding care infrastructure, or decarbonising the economy was not seriously debated. Defence spending became a form of industrial policy, an unspoken rearmament presented as economic realism. Starmer has only made the argument explicit. If Britain is to compete, it must arm. If it is to arm, it must cut. Welfare, not warfare, is unaffordable.
The anti-war movement that once might have resisted this trajectory has, by now, largely collapsed. Stop the War mobilised the largest demonstration in British history in 2003, but it failed to prevent the invasion of Iraq. The realisation that two million people on the streets could be ignored by a Prime Minister with a working majority had a lasting, demoralising effect. Subsequent wars, in Libya, Syria, Yemen, met with smaller protests, muted press coverage, and open disdain from Labour politicians. Corbyn’s leadership revived the movement briefly, but also exposed its fragility. The Labour left became the site of internal struggle, forced to defend itself against accusations of disloyalty, antisemitism, and naivety. Meanwhile, the trade unions, some of which represent workers in the arms industry, remained cautious. When Starmer expelled Corbyn from the parliamentary party, Stop the War issued a statement; most Labour MPs said nothing.
That silence continues. There is little opposition to Starmer’s defence policy within Labour, and even less in the wider political sphere. The Liberal Democrats support the 2.5 per cent pledge. The Greens make the right noises, but have no parliamentary influence. The SNP is too mired in its own internal crisis to mount a consistent critique. Extra-parliamentary movements are fragmented, overstretched, and underfunded. Some have retreated into purely humanitarian work; others have embraced the language of security in order to remain ‘credible’. There is no mass movement against war because there is no shared vision of peace.
Yet the war is ongoing. British arms are killing civilians in Gaza. British-made bombs are being dropped on Yemen. British ships patrol the Red Sea. British special forces operate in Ukraine, Syria, and Somalia. Starmer, who once opposed the Iraq War, now cites that same war as evidence that Labour must never again look soft on security. In this way, war becomes not only permanent, but pedagogical. It teaches the political class what not to do: don’t resist, don’t hesitate, don’t question. It teaches the public to associate patriotism with firepower, and decline with dignity. You may be poor, but at least your country has aircraft carriers.
War is not an aberration in capitalism. It is one of its organising principles. In times of crisis, it becomes its primary method of discipline. The public is told there is no money for child benefit, but billions for new nuclear submarines. The working class is told to accept lower wages and higher rents, because national survival is at stake. The state reveals its real priority: not the reproduction of life, but the reproduction of profit. Socialism, in this context, is not simply about redistribution. It is about disarmament. And that, more than any economic demand, is what makes it unacceptable to the people who run things.
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Footnotes
- Anneliese Dodds quit as international development minister over Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the overseas aid budget to pay for an increase in defence spending. ↩︎
- Although Prime Minister Harold Wilson publicly refused to deploy British combat troops to Vietnam, his government covertly supported the U.S. war effort. This support included intelligence sharing from British installations in Hong Kong and the British Consulate in Saigon, counter-insurgency training provided to South Vietnamese forces, and discreet arms shipments. Concurrently, the UK maintained its global military presence, notably in regions such as the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, reflecting its strategic commitments during the Cold War. ↩︎
