{"id":91671,"date":"2026-04-16T07:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=91671"},"modified":"2026-04-16T07:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:03:29","slug":"who-is-britains-real-enemy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/04\/16\/who-is-britains-real-enemy\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Britain&#8217;s real enemy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Lord George Robertson - a former Labour defence secretary, and former Secretary General of NATO - has made a claim about the UK's defence capability that is not merely wrong; it is dangerously wrong.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>His argument is that the Iran War now justifies higher defence spending, and that social security is the obstacle standing in the way of a proper defence strategy for Britain. This video explains why that argument is the precise inversion of the truth.<\/div>\n<p>Defence is not about weapons, budgets, or protecting elite interests overseas. Defence is about protecting people. It is about ensuring people enjoy freedom from fear, including from physical threat, from poverty, from want, and from the social instability that erodes the fabric of a nation from within. By that definition, which is the only definition that actually serves the majority of British citizens, social security is not the enemy of defence: it is the foundation of it.<\/p>\n<p>Consider what a serious defence requires. You need a fit population. You need people who are healthy, well-nourished, mentally resilient, educated, and able to serve.<\/p>\n<p>You do not build that population by cutting the systems that feed children, heat homes, and provide security in times of illness and unemployment. You destroy it.<\/p>\n<p>Cut social security, and you cut the recruitment pipeline for the armed forces themselves. You weaken national resilience precisely when you claim to be strengthening it.<\/p>\n<p>The statistics make the scale of the real threat plain. 14.2 million people in the UK live in poverty. 4.5 million of those are children, which means 31% of children in this country live in poverty, and 3.6 million of those children go without heating, food, a secure home, or adequate clothing on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>Britain is not primarily threatened by Iran. It is threatened by poverty, by inequality and by the political failure that allows 3.6 million children to suffer preventable deprivation in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Robertson's neoliberal framework cannot see this because it fragments defence into a single military budget line, disconnected from the social infrastructure on which any genuine national resilience depends.<\/p>\n<p>The economist John Maynard Keynes also understood something in the last century that Robertson <span aria-invalid=\"grammar\">has<\/span> forgotten. Keynes managed the UK's economy during two World Wars. His principle was clear: in a time of national crisis, the burden of sacrifice must fall on those most able to bear it - who are the wealthy - and not on the poorest. To demand that the most vulnerable people in Britain pay for a defence strategy they will never benefit from, as Robertson is demanding, is not just unjust; it is economically irrational, strategically dangerous, and the precise opposite of what is required right now.<\/p>\n<p>Social security and military defence are not in a political trade-off. They are mutually dependent. You cannot have one without the other. This video explains why Lord Robertson is dangerously wrong, why Britain's greatest threat comes from within, and what a defence strategy that actually defends people, rather than elite interests, would look like.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/89VMb7_LuOw?si=lxjfCPJn9pr5n6Za\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the audio version:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Who is Britain's real enemy?\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=99kjf-1a9cd57-pb&from=pb6admin&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=f6f6f6&font-color=auto&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=c73a3a\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"p1\">Lord George Robertson is a former Labour defence secretary. He\u2019s also a former Secretary General of NATO, the defence organisation for Europe, and he said in a recent speech that the Iran War is a wake-up call on defence spending and that social security is the problem stopping us from having a proper defence strategy in the UK. He even went on to claim that we cannot defend Britain with an expanding welfare budget, as he called it. But that is just wrong. It\u2019s dangerously wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">If we so badly misunderstand defence in the way that Lord George Robertson has done, we not only won\u2019t have a defence policy, we won\u2019t have a policy for tackling poverty in this country, and we won\u2019t have the security that people need to put them into the mindset that is required to ensure they want to defend this country. He will then end up weakening the very country he claims he wants to protect, and that is exactly what his prescription would deliver: a weaker UK<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Let me be blunt about this. Britain is not primarily threatened by Iran. It\u2019s threatened by poverty, inequality and political failure at home. That is what is bringing this country down right now. Nothing that happens in the Middle East is going to do that unless the US continues to ensure we don\u2019t get oil supplies. But if we have some degree of stability around Iran, we are more threatened by what happens within our domestic economy than we are by any issue around international affairs, and if you don\u2019t understand that, you do not understand defence at all. Yet that misunderstanding, typified by the comments of Lord George Robertson, is now shaping public debate on defence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Robertson\u2019s claim that the Iran war justifies higher defence spending is just wrong. There are four core failures in Robertson\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Firstly, he does not understand what defence is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Secondly, he does not understand who is threatening in the UK at present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Thirdly, he doesn\u2019t understand what a proper defence strategy requires.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">And fourth, he doesn\u2019t understand the economics of defence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">All of those are significant failures in their own right. Put them together, and we are looking at a disaster if we were to follow his prescriptions. Let\u2019s talk about those issues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What is defence all about? Defence is not, of course, the same as an offensive strategy in military terms. The Iranian war is offensive. Let\u2019s be clear. Israel and the USA attacked Iran, and everyone agrees they had no military justification for doing so because there was no immediate threat to them from the Iranians. This was not then a defensive action. That made it an illegal war, and there is no evidence that Iran is threatening the UK either. We cannot be party to illegal wars. We can only be a party to defence. This is the category error that George Robertson has put at the heart of his argument. He thinks the Iran war means that we have to spend more on what he calls defence, when this was not a defensive war. He\u2019s got everything wrong from the outset.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In my opinion, what defence actually is, is protecting people and their lives. It\u2019s freedom from fear that is the core objective of any defence policy. It\u2019s not about protecting British ethnicity or preserving systems of government in this country, or even preserving our territorial rights, and it\u2019s most certainly not about defending the failing economic models that we have in use in this country. It is about the need to defend the right of British people to live in coexistence with each other, and people in other nations, and it\u2019s all about delivering social stability. That is what defence is about, and my argument is that we are failing to defend people in the UK as a matter of fact, at present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">There are 14.2 million people living in poverty in the UK at present, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and they are considered to be the foremost experts on this subject. 4.5 million children are included in that total number, and that is 31% of all children living in poverty. Out of that 4.5 million children living in poverty, 3.6 million are suffering a lack of some essential need every single day, whether that be heating, or food, or the ability of their parents to be able to provide them with a secure environment in which they can be brought up, where essentials are provided, like clothing. This is the failure of our defence strategy at home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">There\u2019s always a home front when it comes to defence, and our defence strategy should be to ensure that everybody in this country lives free from fear. Social security in this context is not the problem that is preventing us from having a defence strategy. It is, in fact, the thing that we need to support to ensure that we do have a proper defence strategy here in the UK because social security is part of our defence infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It reduces fear. It reduces instability. It reduces insecurity, and if it\u2019s done properly, it delivers people who are both fit and healthy and intelligent and mentally strong, and they are the people we need in our armed forces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">You cannot defend the country unless you ensure that we have a fit population, and that\u2019s precisely what our social security system is designed to do. Cut it, and you will weaken our national resilience, and you will weaken our defence systems. My point is that is the critical understanding that Lord George Robertson is lacking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In this context, defence strategy is also primarily domestic. He\u2019s talking about the threat from Iran. There isn\u2019t a threat from Iran. Let\u2019s get real about this. Our focus must be on people and not the protection of overseas interests, which Keir Starmer has been talking about of late, as if it\u2019s our priority to defend those people who have chosen quite deliberately to live outside the UK, so they will not pay taxes here. We don\u2019t need to defend bases in Kuwait. We don\u2019t need to have aircraft carriers in the Pacific Ocean at this point in time. Geography alone is not what defines defence in the UK now, given that we are not a world power, something that both Keir Starmer and Lord George Robertson have forgotten. People and our society are the defence priorities that we should have.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The point is that there is a political blind spot about all of this. They assume that our defence is about defending elite structures that predominate in our society. They prioritise hierarchy, wealth and power. They ignore the lived reality of most people\u2019s lives, and they confuse our state and its defence with the interests of its governing class. That is strategically dangerous. Our armed forces are made up of ordinary people. The assumption of those who think that we are defending an elite is misplaced. Ordinary people will not fight these days to defend an elite, and it is from our poorer communities in the UK that our armed forces have always recruited the most personnel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Social security cuts do therefore automatically undermine recruitment for our armed forces in this country because the people that we have are not healthy and fit enough to fight. This is a simple, straightforward statement of fact, and the fact that George Robertson attacks the systems that support the people who live in the communities from which the army, navy, and air force will wish to recruit indicates that he doesn\u2019t understand that this policy will directly undermine the people in those communities\u2019 willingness to serve their country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the same time, George Robertson does not understand the economic reality of warfare. Defence requires that real resources that could be used for other purposes be sacrificed to ensure that we have the army, navy, and air force that we desire. The insights on this issue all come from John Maynard Keynes. I keep on talking about his approach to the management of war, but he was a man who managed that for us in both the First and Second World Wars, and he did so successfully. His argument in 1940 was that the sacrifice that the Second World War was going to demand should fall on those most able to bear it. Robertson has reversed this logic in what he has had to say. His argument is that the burden of suffering at this moment to pay for our defence strategy must fall on those who are poorest in the UK. That makes no sense at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The poor cannot afford this additional sacrifice that he is demanding that they make. They will not be able to deliver as a consequence. Any change you make to them will weaken demand in our economy. It will reduce social stability. It will reduce our capacity to sustain defence, and it will leave the consumption of the wealthy untouched in a way that can only cause resentment and anger, and that will undermine our defence strategy, yet again. The fact is, the people who must make the sacrifice are those who can, and they are the wealthy. It\u2019s economically irrational and unjust to assume anything else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The failure that George Robertson reveals is a failure to understand strategy itself. There is no coherent view of defence or the economy inside his thinking. His approach is dominated by neoliberal thinking, and that fragments our defence strategy. It is producing incoherence at the top levels of government because they are blind to the consequences of their actions and the impact that they are having upon ordinary people, who they demand to be compliant with the ideas that they put in place. They are, in fact, undermining the very credibility of government itself, and that is the absolute opposite of a coherent defence strategy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Robertson\u2019s comments on defence are then fundamentally misframed. He would misallocate resources that our armed forces require. He would create more social division as a consequence. He would reduce national resilience. The real risks that we face are being ignored by him, and we would get weaker armed forces in practice as a consequence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We would have a less willing population who would not answer the call to arms. There would be greater internal instability as a result of everything that he is saying. He would undermine the legitimacy of the state, and he would increase the UK\u2019s long-term insecurity as a consequence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We need to change our approach to defence as a result.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Our defence policy needs to be designed around people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It needs to be designed around the need to protect people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It needs to start with social security as a consequence, because a sound social security system is the basis for the recruitment of the personnel that our armed forces require.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We have to think about that issue, and we have to shift the burden of paying for defence to those who can bear it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">We must focus on domestic resilience first, and we must reject incoherent, elite-driven narratives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">That\u2019s what I think can actually make our country secure. I believe that we don\u2019t have a trade-off between military spending and social security to make in this country. In fact, the two are mutually dependent upon each other, and if we are defending people, we shouldn\u2019t be worrying about institutions of power and what they\u2019re saying. We should instead be looking at how we can put power into our communities to ensure that people want to defend them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">That\u2019s what I think. Let me know what you think in the comments below. There is a poll, and if you like this video, please share it, and if you\u2019re so inclined and you think that arguments of this sort are important, if you\u2019d like to make a donation, we\u2019d be very grateful.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Poll<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-370\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t<form id=\"polls_form_370\" class=\"wp-polls-form\" action=\"\/Blog\/index.php\" method=\"post\">\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_370_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"5f5ec6e339\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"poll_id\" value=\"370\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>What is the biggest defence threat to the UK today?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-370-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1633\" name=\"poll_370\" value=\"1633\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1633\">Poverty and inequality that weaken our country<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1634\" name=\"poll_370\" value=\"1634\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1634\">Foreign military threats<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1635\" name=\"poll_370\" value=\"1635\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1635\">Political failure to understand defence needs<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"radio\" id=\"poll-answer-1636\" name=\"poll_370\" value=\"1636\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-1636\">Economic instability<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><input type=\"button\" name=\"vote\" value=\"   Vote   \" class=\"Buttons\" onclick=\"poll_vote(370);\" \/><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"#ViewPollResults\" onclick=\"poll_result(370); return false;\" title=\"View Results Of This Poll\">View Results<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-370-loading\" class=\"wp-polls-loading\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-polls\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading ...\" title=\"Loading ...\" class=\"wp-polls-image\" \/>&nbsp;Loading ...<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lord George Robertson &#8211; a former Labour defence secretary, and former Secretary General of NATO &#8211; has made a claim about the UK&#8217;s defence capability<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/04\/16\/who-is-britains-real-enemy\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,35,16,147,118,224,106,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-inequality","category-labour","category-neoliberalism","category-politics","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91696,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91671\/revisions\/91696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}