Guns, Butter & The Fruits of War

UK's Labour cuts welfare for bombs; faces rebellion

• Latest security review calls for 'whole-of-society' militarization

• Media sees a spending crisis instead of a transformation

• UK prepares for war and austerity, two sides of a coin

• If you're in Canada, Down Under, or even in the U.S., watch out!

• In a divergent society, oligarchic profit Trumps everything

• Don't be distracted by enemies; it's about who is the target

• Expanding state security beyond the arena of military, intelligence and law

• The UK national security review suggest a new ‘social contract’ without specifics

• At the same time, a prominent academic says UK is on brink of civil war

Blue face of austerity

Related:
Fabians, Milner Group And War - Britain commits to Ukraine, cuts pensions, announces austerity (Jul 29, 2024)
Western Countries Need Enemies, But Whom? Britain's surrender of Diego Garcia reveals a contradiction (May 23, 2025)
The Never Normal is Forever - UK Gov aims to Embed Control through 'New Identities' (Sep 07, 2021)

(2,300 words or about a quarter hour of your company)

July 1, 2025

There's a rebellion in Britain's ruling Labour party, as Keir Starmer's government tries to cut welfare to pay for weapons.

The press is focused on will he, won't he, lose a vote after making concessions on disability or "independence" payments. Journalists are baffled how Starmer will manage to raise military spending to his commitment of 5 per cent of GDP.

It is only perplexing until you realise that austerity and war go hand in hand.

Despite a huge majority which is the envy of his counterparts in Europe and the Anglosphere, Starmer shares their rock-bottom approval ratings.

He says he was distracted by war in Eurasia and West Asia, and re-militarisation. He missed the scale of unrest over welfare cuts, because, Starmer told the Sunday Times, he was “heavily focused on what was happening with NATO and the Middle East.”

Cutting welfare and building armies are not opposites. They are complementary.

One purpose of war IS austerity. And the response to austerity (falling living standards, monetary crisis, civil unrest) IS war.

The UK's latest security reviews have been criticised for blurring the lines between security and politics. Historical perspective is your friend: with their back to the wall politicians send the disaffected youth off to fight. They default on the debt. They export problems through war. It has always been thus.

On the one hand Starmer has failed to reconciled the budget (Think yourself lucky. Canadians don't even have one!). He wants to cut welfare assistance because one in 10 people of working age is on disability, which has ballooned since the Covid response. In five years such spending could exceed that on transport, policing and social care. He's cut heating allowances for the elderly, outsourced more of the health service to the private sector, and raised taxes for employers and farmers.

On the other hand his government declares its intention to rearm and militarize: it will build a dozen attack submarines, buy at least that many F-35A jets that can carry nuclear bombs, and spend 5 per cent of the UK's GDP on national security by 2035. It has assigned £1-2 billion to upgrade ageing biosecurity labs (why didn't they do that during Covid?)

Reading runes

Where this leads is revealed by two crucial defence and security reviews released in recent weeks; what they say, and what they don't.

In coming articles we'll divine how benefit cuts, and tax-and-spend decisions, relate to military rearmament. Not in terms of pounds and pence but how the militarization of society merges with social engineering.

“If you want to deter conflict, then the best way to do that is prepare for war” Starmer said last month announcing a strategic defence review, whose recommendations he accepted: putting not just the army, but the "whole-of-society" on a war footing of "defence and deterrence."

As with European politicians' statements on war, you have to read between the lines.

"We are neither at war, nor at peace,"said the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Kaja Kallas in March. This is the doctrine of hybrid warfare, in which the civilian population is a domain of influence, conflict and control.

There are two parts to the UK's military rethink released in the past three weeks: the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of the armed forces, and the more broad National Security Strategy (NSS), defined as the "long-term security and social and economic wellbeing of the British people." [1]

Great power rivalry is showing up in multiple regions, yet the UK SDR focuses narrowly on Ukraine and the European Atlantic.

The UK government's own Global Strategic Trends: Out to 2055 (published in Sep 2024) examines the evolution of the global realignment, including China's technological advance and military modernization.

This places it in competition with the United States but the impact of great power rivalry extends to intergovernmental institutions, where it challenges Western systems and dominance. Economically China's Belt and Road Initiative challenges trade routes and the naval balance of power. Geographically this rivalry is felt around the world, in Africa, Latin America and Asia. [2]

The implications of these global trends include competition for energy and resources, supply chains and migration, wealth inequality and civil unrest, and the targeting of and competition between civilian populations (human security).

The SDR calls for rearmament and militarisation but does not consider the risks: