Few critiques of British mythmaking have been more astute than that of Correlli Barnett. He argued that 18th-century statesmen were hardheaded industrialists and merchants who understood the basis of military power. Then a new culture emerged, created by Victorian educationalists, one that had a ‘high-minded emphasis on religion and the classics’.
By the end of the 19th century, Britain’s elites no longer understood the nation’s military-industrial base. They had become little more than a complacent establishment, rather than men of action. Hampered by inefficiencies and ill-prepared for conflict, Britain emerged from the second world war shrunken, uncompetitive and condemned to further decline.
Unsurprisingly, Barnett’s diagnosis of the ‘British disease’ proved popular with Margaret Thatcher. But it is doubtful that our current prime minister knows of Barnett’s work. Keir Starmer is not a man overburdened by history. When asked how he felt walking past his predecessors’ portraits in No. 10, Starmer had nothing to say.
While Labour dithers, the world only becomes more dangerous, and the cost of inactivity rises
If the Prime Minister wants his brief and arid premiership to be remembered for anything, he needs to focus on the military-industrial base. The government’s response to the Strategic Defence Review – written by Lord Robertson, a former Nato Secretary-General, and released last June – has encapsulated a long-standing problem with British defence policy: a tendency to speak loudly and carry a small stick. We have, Lord Robertson argues, committed beyond our capabilities, undermined our usefulness as a partner and provoked the ire of our allies.
