ANDREW NEIL: As Russia’s threats grow more chilling, my three radical steps to make us PUTIN-PROOF

Even for a new Labour government which has proved to be repeatedly accident-prone –adept only at scoring own goals – there was something particularly cack-handed about announcing cuts to our defence capabilities on the same day British-made Storm Shadow missiles started smashing into military bases on Russian soil.

Allowing Ukraine to use longer-range US and British missiles to impede Russian advances by taking out military storage depots and arsenals has provoked the Kremlin into re-issuing all manner of blood-curdling threats against NATO in general and Britain in particular.

Now would have been a good time to make clear we were not intimidated by President Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling and that our armed forces were fully primed to deter any aggression, in concert with our powerful NATO allies.

Instead, Defence Secretary John Healey, a decent, patriotic cove who believes in the defence of the realm even if some of his cabinet colleagues are rather less committed, decided to announce £500million-worth of cuts in the UK’s naval, helicopter and drone assets. Even the Kremlin must have been scratching its head.

The real villain here, however, is not the novice Labour government but the last 14 years of Tory rule, which penny-pinched defence spending. 

In 2009-10, the final year of the last Labour government, defence spending was £57billion (in today’s money). The incoming Tory government then starved defence of funds, as part of its austerity drive, reaching a nadir of £44.5billion in 2016-17.

Thereafter, defence spending started to creep up again. But, even as the world became a much more dangerous place, in 2023-24 (the last full financial year of Conservative rule) it was still only £54billion, £3billion in real terms below where it had been 14 years before.

Labour is somewhat flattered by these figures. It was known in 2010 that if Gordon Brown had been re-elected Labour would also have cut defence spending. Brown was no great fan of the military, except when (as with aircraft carriers) it benefited his Scottish constituency.

Even so, a combination of parsimony and incompetence during the Tory years proved to be a toxic brew, hollowing out our defence capabilities to such an extent that the Royal Navy’s surface fleet was eviscerated – even lacking enough ships to protect the new carriers – and defence experts began to fear the British Army had become incapable of deploying a fighting force at anything close to the scale likely to be required. 

American military planners began to discount British armed forces, bar special forces and intelligence, as no longer of much consequence.

Even when the Tories came up with the necessary funds, billions were squandered on the most wasteful of procurement processes which they never managed to get a grip of – from the Royal Navy’s multi-billion-pound late and over-budget carriers (started under the last Labour government) to the army’s Ajax armoured fighting vehicle, devised well over a decade ago, still not deployed, still gobbling up hundreds of millions in overspend. 

The Ministry of Defence has become synonymous with eking out the lowest possible bang for every buck spent – a poster child for bureaucratic incompetence, in which we now have more MoD pen-pushers than soldiers equipped to fight.

Nor is the military itself without fault. As our armed forces have shrunk in size it has become a top-heavy boondoggle for the top brass: more admirals than warships, more generals than fighting units, more senior RAF officers than fighter jets – a military superstructure of fancy titles and impressive uniforms with nothing to command. 

This has been Labour’s inheritance. And it seems determined to make things worse. This, in an era when the world becomes a more dangerous place with every passing day.

As I see it, there are three things the Government must do if it is to make Britain Putin-proof.

First, it must not only stop prevaricating over when it will raise defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent – it must think even bigger. For our armed forces to become credible again we need to be spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030. 

I fear this is unlikely to happen. Labour ministers can quickly rustle up billions for everything from overpaid striking train drivers to an insatiable NHS to green energy schemes to satisfy Ed Miliband’s every whim.

But when it comes to the proper financing of the defence of the realm they remain schtum, which tells you everything about where their priorities really lie.

In truth, spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence is not enough on its own to make our military fit for purpose, though it is an essential first step.

More money would make it incumbent on the military to give far better value which, in my view, requires a radical second step: the abolition of a separate army, navy and airforce and the creation of a British Defence Force combining all the services under a single command structure.

I can hear the outrage among the top brass already at such heresy. They will fight it with all the entrenched self-entitlement of the print workers in Fleet Street of old or today’s Luddite train drivers. But national security and the proper, efficient use of funds devoted to defence demand it.

The United States Marine Corps, probably the most formidable fighting force in the world, is 180,000-strong – 30,000 more than the combined might of Britain’s armed forces, with the ability to fight on land, sea and air. The USMC should be the model for a radical overhaul of our military.

At a stroke, turf wars between the various services would come to an end. Infighting over who should have the helicopters or fly off the decks of the aircraft carriers would be no more.

The top brass in all the services would be culled and slimmed down to create a single command structure. Investment decisions would be taken on the basis of what was best for Britain’s overall military posture, not who happened to have ministers’ ears – army, navy or air force – at any particular time.

Procurement could be streamlined, equipment standardised. Value for money, at last, for the British taxpayer.

The Israeli Defence Force is another pretty good template for Britain to learn from when it comes to combining the services. The IDF defends a country which has faced an existential threat since it was established almost 80 years ago. So far it has been more than a match for all who would destroy it.

Germany’s Bundeswehr is also worth of study. It has, of course, been starved of funds in recent years and its various services still have a certain individual identity. But the combined command structure allows decisions to be taken in the national interest rather than the self-serving interests of any one service.

The third step in my three-point programme to drag our military capabilities into the 21st century is as radical as the creation of a British Defence Force: a missile defence system to protect the homeland from rogue states increasingly armed with missiles that can hit us – and if they can’t at the moment they will soon be able to.

This week Putin unleashed a medium-range ballistic missile on a Ukrainian city while simultaneously loosening the protocols around Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

Iran has mounted two mass missile attacks on Israel while also supplying Russia with missiles and drones. North Korea, which has already deployed troops alongside Russian forces against Ukraine, has missiles to offer too.

Russian missiles, of course, can already hit Britain. It won’t be long before the missiles of the more unpredictable members of the axis of evil, such as Iran, can do so too.

It is a remarkable lacunae in modern British military strategy that we have no defence against this threat, certainly nothing like Israel’s Iron Dome system. Our main anti-missile defences –Typhoon jets, Type-45 destroyers and our only ground-based air defence system, Sky Sabre – are no match for the ballistic missile threats just over the horizon.

Germany is similarly threatened (as is most of Europe) but has done something about it – just over a year ago it signed a $3.5billion deal with Israel to buy Arrow 3, its most sophisticated anti-ballistic missile interception capability, which was successfully deployed against Iran’s recent missile attack. It will be delivered late next year.

Britain should be following Germany’s example. Not only would it make our islands more secure, we would reap huge dividends from technological cooperation with Israel, which is at the cutting edge of anti-missile technology. Development won’t stop at Arrow 3.

Such a course of action demands grown-up politics, which are in short supply these days. It’s quite hard to cosy up to Israel for essential anti-missile technology while also indicating you’ll lock up its prime minister, should he ever come to Britain, because the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him. The ICC is an activist court whose lead prosecutor is no friend of Israel. He’s also under investigation for sexual harassment allegations (charges, he strenuously denies, it has to be said).

The court appears to see no distinction between Hamas, an evil terrorist dictatorship, and the democratically elected and accountable government of Israel. It is over-reaching itself: the ICC only has jurisdiction over its member states. Israel is not a member and Gaza is not a state.

Yet some Labour ministers seem to relish the prospect of arresting Benjamin Netanyahu, should he make the unlikely mistake of ever coming here, which makes them more student politicians than custodians of a great nation. It’s hardly a friendly basis for asking Israel, a good ally, to help defend our national security.

I’m currently reading a history of the 1930s, when the Labour and Conservative parties looked the other way as the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe, rather as they are now.

Labour’s position was especially egregious. In late 1933, as the Nazis consolidated their evil grip on Germany and began relentless rearmament to expand their tyranny, George Lansbury, then leader of the Labour Party, called for the British army to be disbanded and the RAF to be dismissed.

Even Clement Attlee, who succeeded Lansbury as party leader and would eventually play a distinguished role in Churchill’s war cabinet, went along with this pacifism at the time.

In 1935, two years after Lansbury had spouted his nonsense, when the Nazi threat was more obvious than ever, Attlee was still saying Labour’s ‘policy is not one of seeking security through rearmament but through disarmament’. Many Tory appeasers agreed with him.

The current crop of Labour leaders is better than that: pacifism is very much a minority pursuit in today’s party. But Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are ignorant in military matters and defence strategy.

I fear they have little inclination to spend 3 per cent on defence, no interest in the radical overhaul of our military to create a formidable British Defence Force and no appetite for a missile shield.

We paid a heavy, almost unimaginable, price for the stupidity of our political elite in the 1930s.

We are in a better position now than we were then. But the dangers are just as great and, unless we square up to them, honestly and robustly, we risk paying another terrible price.