UK to move “into war-fighting readiness.” Please help me decode.

[NigellaWannabe1]

I’ve been following the development of various conflicts with increasing dread. Now this announcement from Keir Stammer - it sounds so ominous.

What's your take on it? I’d particularly welcome the perspective of those of you working in communications.

I'm not qualified or anything but I do think that a war is coming. Terrifying.

This is from the announcement this morning about more submarines being built? It will probably take 15-20 years to build them. So they certainly wouldn’t be ready for any imminent war.

I know he’s justifying the huge increase in defence spending. But also wonder if he’s warning us all too?

There’s no war about to happen. Russia can’t even fight Ukraine without help from North Korea. It’s all just war games and posturing.

I’m not sure that’s true. Things are more complex than that - Russia has allies and we no longer have a sane US government.

The US isn’t willing to bank-roll the defence of Europe any more, therefore we need to step-up our spending to compensate.

Letting Putin know we’ve got a well-resourced military ready to go makes us more safe, not less safe. It’ll take quite a while though, and, sadly, I don’t think Ukraine can hold out in the meantime.

Honestly, I’m so fed up with all the warmongering talk. We’re an island nation with nuclear weapons we should be focusing on sorting out the mess we have at home, not getting dragged into conflicts halfway across the world. I feel for countries facing bigger threats, but that doesn't mean we should be piling into wars ourselves.

A world war now would be catastrophic, especially when climate change is barrelling toward us faster than ever. We’re running out of time to deal with the planet, and the last thing we need is global conflict making everything worse. That said, if it does happen, we probably won’t get much say in it and a full-scale war between nuclear powers could genuinely be the end of everything. It’s terrifying, and I just wish more leaders were focused on peace instead of posturing.

War mongering helps Starmer's polling. It's just sabre rattling without the money to back it up.

We’re an island nation with nuclear weapons we should be focusing on sorting out the mess we have at home, not getting dragged into conflicts halfway across the world.

Very much agree. We are not the world’s policeman. The USA has resigned the position.

We need to spend a long time sorting ourselves out. If others want to fight far away, let them.

Agree with @HeddaGarbled .Defence has been cut pretty much every year and we do need (given trump and to be fair other presidents too) to pay our fair share. It’s about defending national interests and working with allies. The world is increasingly unstable and we can’t just pull up the draw bridge.

If Putin marches into other parts of Europe, how many more refugees will there be heading towards Western Europe and the UK?

I do t think it’s a decision any government wants to take, but in the upside there will be more investment in places like Barrow. And hopefully more jobs.

I think he's just saying a few words about the submarines. I don't think you can read that much into anything he says. I don't think KS sends coded messages to the general public about anything, he can barely distinguish his arse from his elbow when it comes to making speeches and informing us about anything.

The Cold War between the USA and Russia was between 1947 and 1991. I'm old enough to remember in the 70s and 80s the constant threat of nuclear war and the newspapers being full of articles on what to do in the event of a nuclear war and how to build a fall out shelter. There's always a threat of war and it's sensible to have an army/navy and air force to defend us with the right military equipment so spending on defence is important but it doesn't mean we are about to go to war, so no I'm not worried.

It’s not about being the world’s policeman. It’s about stopping Putin’s expansionist ambitions before they gain momentum. You only have to look at how other wars started to understand the importance of this.

So if defence spending rises to 3% of GDP which would mean an extra £30 billion a year and at the same time our economy (and the global economy) heads into recession or worse, with government borrowing becoming more expensive, how exactly are we meant to afford this? What gives?

That’s a huge amount of public money at a time when the NHS is struggling, schools are underfunded, councils are going bust, and climate change needs urgent action. It feels like we’re gearing up for more war while everything at home is falling apart.Is this really what we want our priorities to be?

It's basically saying that having cut defence spending way beyond reasonable limits over the last 25 years, (especially the 2011 Defence Review) the Govt has now woken up to the fact that the UK is virtually defenceless.

My take on it is that we are very much closer to war than I’m comfortable with. But, we’ve been here before, we’ll be here again and there is absolutely nothing that I can do to change what is happening. If we’ve got 12 months before nuclear war breaks out, then I’m not going to waste it panicking about things I can’t do anything about.

All you can really do is prepare just as much as you’re able to. If war happens then our infrastructure will be a prime target. Keep (and refresh) a stash of bottled water. Make sure you have candles, matches, batteries, torches, tinned foods and a stash of cash tucked away. Are you a camper? Get a camping stove. Buy a ruck sack. Keep your IDs all together, along with any medication, so if you need to move, you can grab it in a hurry. Buy a power pack to recharge your phone. Make sure the people who are important to you know that you love them. And then get on with life as normal.

As these subs are for 15 years time I would not overly worry. I just wish they would fix the ones we have!

getting the ammunition factories built here is just common sense anyway and it’s great news for youngsters wanting engineering apprenticeships

Pretty much this. He loves a war mongering poll bounce, the only time he’s had one so far.

I wouldn’t pay much attention beyond that.

The military has had massive underinvestment for the last 30-odd years. Due to the Cold War ending we’ve been able to invest money that would previously been spent on defence on other things, like health and education - the Peace Dividend.

We are now seeing the impact of that underinvestment - an army of just 73,000 and a stocktake that showed we would run out of ammunition in 8 days if called on to fight a land war in Europe are just two examples

DH left the RAF 5 years ago after a near 20-year career. He was disillusioned and exhausted after witnessing years of cuts and people being worked into the ground.

Well they do say “if you seek peace prepare for war”.

I don’t think we should be panicking (esp as it does no good anyway).

I think we’re much more likely to avoid a war by being well prepare for one.

As others have said, defence spending has been way too low for years, and KS has to make a good case for increasing it. He also has to make a good case for increasing defence co-operation with the EU and other partners, and there are some people who will get pissy about that on ill-founded principle - so again he has to go in strong.

Also, russia, NK and the like are much more likely to try to start a war if they think we’re defenceless. Our best bet for avoiding war is to be ready to fight one.

This is a good concise answer!

This is what the vaunted £30 billion defence uplift could buy per year and like Corbyn's magic money tree where is the money coming from what will be cut and do we get a vote ?

We are already under attack. Some of the big cyber attacks are very much linked to Russia.
War looks different now.

The Cold War between the USA and Russia was between 1947 and 1991.

When was the cold war between NATO and the USSR though ?

^ This - with knobs on. I just looked up these figures for the British Army:

In 1994 there were 152,000 troops.
In 2004 there were 112,000.
In 2014 there were 90,000.
In 2024 there were 75,000.

To be quite frank, I'm horrified and appalled at those figures. In 30 years, our army has reduced in size by more than 50%. When you look at it like that, we are sitting ducks and absolutely do need to increase our spending on the armed forces.

Putting it into context, the UK population in 1994 was 57.8m. In 2024 it is 69.1m, an increase of circa 20%. So in theory, in order to protect that population, one would have expected the number of troops to have increased.