A terrible enemy has been attacking the British armed forces. Since the end of the Cold War it has sunk 43 ships, downed over 200 planes, and reduced the ranks of our army by over 40,000 soldiers, decimating our ability to project power, defend our territorial waters, or assist our allies. This monstrous foe, more deadly than the Russians or the Chinese, more fanatically hostile than Al Qaeda or the Taliban, is of course His Majesty’s Treasury.
According to Lord George Robertson, former secretary-general of NATO and author of the government’s Strategic Defence Review, “non-military experts in the Treasury” have committed “vandalism” at a time of unique national peril. Lord Robertson went on to say, “we are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe … Britain’s national security and safety is in peril”.
The Treasury has long been a nemesis of the British defence establishment. Penny-pinching officials fought British re-armament in the 1930s tooth and nail, even as Germany and Russia were putting their economies on a war footing. With a remit of “value for money”, yet effective veto power over every aspect of Whitehall, the Treasury is the structural flaw at the heart of the British state, preventing strategic thinking, and imposing its flawed agenda on successive governments.
The collapse of confidence in Starmer and his party, so soon after a decisive general election victory, is intimately connected with the power that Labour has given the Treasury over its agenda. A raft of poorly thought through, economically depressive taxes were dreamed up you know where by you know who, with Labour crucified in the press and buried in a grave dug by their own civil servants.
Yet if civil servants end up imposing an agenda on often weak-willed politicians, much of the problem is an inability of officials to act with independent initiative, and take individual responsibility. Process wins out over rational thought, and strategic direction is lost between the short term political objectives of ministers and the managerial sclerosis of the civil service. As outlined in exhaustive detail by the Southport Inquiry, there is an endemic culture of buck-passing in many parts of the public sector. This is a world which is persistently and fatally “low stakes”, at least for those inside the bubble. Decisions are never made, risks never taken, responsibility is always handed off, and jobs are invariably for life.
But out in the real world, the stakes are existential. If British public servants were willing to leave a disturbed teenager who attacked a fellow pupil with a hockey stick and brought knives into school to his own devices until he escalated to mass murder, and if, further, they were willing to look the other way as hundreds of children were groomed by Pakistani gangs, it is only a question of scale to imagine how willing they might be to leave the entire country utterly defenceless in the face of war and terrorism.
As hostile Indian and Chinese interests converged greedily on the strategically vital Diego Garcia base, British Foreign Office officials advised ceding the question of sovereignty to a foreign power and paying them off. And as missiles rained across the Middle East, striking British bases, a miserly single vessel was available for air defence overseas, thanks to generations of cuts, and a military industrial sector lacking capacity, competition and long-term planning. With drones and missiles ever more available to non-state actors, and “hybrid warfare” involving economic conflict, cyber warfare, and misinformation accompanying kinetic conflict, the ability to respond rapidly to ever changing circumstances is central to 21st century warfare. Yet British policy makers continue to imagine that we will be able to pay for our defence only when we need it, and not before.
Serious reform, both in structures and thinking, is now a necessary precondition of having a functional British state. The economy has been stagnant since the 2008 crash, and manufacturing has been allowed to wither thanks to the prejudices of an entrenched elite. Things simply don’t get done. Medical appointments are perpetually delayed, housing shortages worsen. HS2 gets ever shorter, and in the latest moment of absurdist Treasury-brained comedy, the trains of the new high speed line are going to be slowed in order to save money.
There is now a growing consensus that something must be done, with figures from across the political spectrum, from Lord Glasman to Michael Gove, calling for the radical reform or abolition of the Treasury.
So how to bring strategic planning back into Whitehall, and how to break the narrowminded monopoly of the treasury? The answers are closely linked. In the first instance, how we decide spending has to become a whole government question, with an open consultation process rather than a behind the scenes slugfest over who gets the biggest slice of the pie.
What could this look like? In the first instance, we have to break the power of the treasury. One could, as suggested by Lord Gove, split the economic and budgetary functions into two departments, so that economic planning and budgetary rigour are not confused into a single, frozen agenda. The role of both bodies in the budget could be rendered advisory, with the actual decisions made through the Cabinet office, restoring power to the Prime Minister, and bringing it closer to the democratic process. The No 10 strategy unit could be revived, and tasked with ensuring that spending and decision making is serving a long-term, cohesive strategy that serves the national interest.
It also means a qualitative shift in how public servants think of their role. The democratic mandate of ministers should not serve as an excuse for officials to avoid taking an active, responsible role in decision making. They must be easier to hire, and to fire, with bigger rewards for success, and greater penalties for failure. Though ultimate say should rest with ministers and parliament, the men and women who run the country should be creatively and morally invested in what they do, rather than detached behind a veil of procedure and official neutrality.
Getting direction and purpose back into government means setting out a plan, making hard choices and taking responsibility. That obligation doesn’t begin and end with the Prime Ministers we set out as sacrificial lambs and ritual scapegoats — it starts with every one of us, from senior officials to ordinary voters. We each of us need to think carefully about what we want, in our lives, in our communities and in our country. And we each of us need to take responsibility and ownership over them.
