Conservatives win big, but UK unlikely to return to the days (in 1805) of its 950-ship navy

Special to WorldTribune.com

By GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, in London.

Britain’s general elections of May 7, 2015, quickly produced a decisive and unexpected result: an absolute majority in the House of Commons to the Conservative Party, ending the five-year run of coalition Conservative government with the Liberal Democratic Party.

There was no indication, however, that the clear mandate won by Prime Minister David Cameron would translate into stability for the UK on the global stage.

David Cameron, left, with Commander John Livesey RN, said during the campaing that he would maintain his longstanding commitment for UK's submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent.
David Cameron, left, with Commander John Livesey RN, said during the campaing that he would maintain his longstanding commitment for UK’s submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent.

It seemed likely that the Conservative win would enable a continuation of domestic economic stability and growth, but the fact that the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats meant that the United Kingdom was split into what seemed to be a north-south divide. This had several ramifications, including the fact that SNP was opposed to Britain’s retention of a nuclear deterrent force, principally now based around the Royal Navy’s Trident II D5 SLBM-equipped Vanguard-class submarines (SSBNs), based out of the Clyde Naval Base at Faslane, in Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

But the concern could be less about the ultra-left SNP views on defense than about the Party’s views on the UK’s European Union (EU) membership.

Prime Minister Cameron had campaigned on a commitment to offer UK voters a referendum by 2017 on whether Britain should stay in the EU. The SNP view, however, was that England — now pervasively dominated by the Conservative Party — could not use a referendum to take all of the UK, including Scotland, out of the EU, arguing that Scotland would be disenfranchised in such a vote.

The SNP gained its dominance of the Scottish seats in Westminster, however, not by a reasoned presentation of its strategic plans for Scotland as a separate state, or on the SNP’s ability to govern Scotland without the great economic input of the rest of the UK, essentially meaning England. The SNP’s success has been driven by highly emotional imagery, but its implicit threat now would be that a referendum to take the UK out of the EU would mean the de facto breakup of Great Britain, leaving an independent Scotland within the EU.

Such an outcome would be more difficult for the SNP to achieve than it would seem, however. And already the same Scottish voters who gave the party 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster Parliament were the same voters who, in September 2014, had rejected the SNP’s plea for Scottish independence by 55.3 percent.

In any event, the SNP is aware of that, but nonetheless insists that it would challenge the legitimacy of a national UK referendum which could be decided against the wishes of Scotland. This fact alone will make it more difficult for Prime Minister Cameron to negotiate with (in particular) German Chancellor Angela Merkel a more separate space in the EU.

However, if Cameron cannot achieve a better deal for the UK within the EU, then he will face significant pressure at home for the withdrawal of Britain from the Union, regardless of the SNP threats. In other words, the Conservative majority in the House of Commons (a projected 331 of the 650 seats) may not give Prime Minister Cameron the kind of freedom he would have liked.

At the same time, Cameron has yet to exhibit any enthusiasm to rebuild Britain’s rapidly-declining defense capabilities. His government, five years earlier, inherited two budget-distorting defense sectors which have been described as critical to the UK’s retention of a “place at the top table”: firstly, its submarine-based nuclear strike capability (its Tridents as well as its nuclear-armed cruise missiles); and secondly, its two new c70,000 ton disp. Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.

Arguably, the sea-based nuclear capability is indispensable to the UK’s retention of first power status, even though the likelihood of nuclear weapons use for any war-winning purpose is negligible. The capability exists for psychological purposes. Real strategic warfighting at counter-city levels would be done with cyber capabilities.

The acquisition of carrier battle groups, however, is strategically questionable because of the extent to which they distort the overall UK defense capabilities, particularly at a time when — despite the UK’s optimistic economic performance under the Conservatives — defense spending is down from 3.8 percent of GDP in 1990 to less than two percent today.

Moreover, with a fleet of 19 major surface combatants (destroyers and frigates) and six attack submarines, it is evident that the UK could not deploy carrier battle groups (which include the surface and underwater escorts) in serious conflict and still undertake other essential maritime tasks. As well, as the UK moves toward in- service capability for the two carriers in 2018 and 2020 (with aircraft due to come into service later), the vulnerability of carriers in serious conflict situations becomes pronounced.

Despite the unrealistic shape of the RN — the senior service for a reason for an island trading nation — it has dragged down spending for the Army, Royal Air Force, and Royal Marines: services indispensable, also, for a global rôle for Britain. Cameron, then, has to make key decisions on defense within the coming two years if the British Armed Forces are to retain any meaningful global viability.

And yet it is unlikely that defense will rise to become, once again, a priority for his government, if recent performance is anything to go by. The current Sec. of State for Defence, Michael Fallon, who only assumed the portfolio on July 15, 2014, would probably retain his post in the new government. If he did not, then it would definitely indicate that Prime Minister Cameron had little interest in continuity at Defence.

And despite the decline in the size and capability of the UK Armed Forces, the size of the Ministry of Defence establishment has remained bloated.

It is not insignificant that the Ministry’s Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) facility at Abbey Wood, in Bristol, in the West of England, is the biggest defense facility in the UK, with an estimated 12,000 employees.

This is defense procurement headquarters, for an Armed Forces strength of less than 157,000 uniformed personnel. Total Ministry of Defence civilian personnel number more than 60,000. To put it mildly, Britain’s “tooth-to-tail ratio” is declining rapidly.

Army regiments are cut and cut in an atmosphere of proportionately declining budget availability, but the bureaucracy does not also diminish proportionately. Today, the UK has some 64-million people. In 1813, toward the end of the Napoleonic and Peninsula wars and just after the War of 1812 with the U.S., Britain’s population was around 19-million, it had an Army of a quarter-million men under arms. The Royal Navy had some 950 ships in 1805.

What was clear was that Britain, when it considered itself a world power, considered its military as a greater priority, and as a more central aspect of political and social life. There is little evidence that Prime Minister Cameron, in 2015, would seek to rekindle even a small revival in that thinking.

You must be logged in to post a comment Login