Starmer is still not serious about defeating Putin

Telegraph

02-06-2025

Democratic politicians would prefer not to prepare for war. This is understandable. There are always huge pressures on public spending. Peace – anyway an obviously desirable state of affairs – provides a financial dividend that our leaders do not want to lose.
They only really change their minds when a threat stares them in the face. Since Winston Churchill, our least war-averse prime minister was Margaret Thatcher, but even she, after first coming into office, initiated defence cuts.
Determined to fulfil Nato obligations to defend against the Soviet Union (three per cent of annual GDP), she tried to cut everything else in the defence budget.
Then Argentina suddenly invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, just before Mrs Thatcher had implemented her proposed navy cuts. Within about three days, she reversed the policy.
Our armed forces were still – just – capable of fighting serious battles 8,000 miles away. We won the war, and she won the next election.
Even Ukraine itself, the object of direct threat and actual Russian violence since 2014, was not unanimous about resistance until Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Western policymakers tended to think that President Zelensky would accept their invitation to escape and Vladimir Putin would install his puppets.
Ever since then, with infinitely smaller resources than the Nato alliance, Ukraine has fought on because it is fighting for its life. Necessity is the mother of their great invention, as we were reminded this weekend by Ukraine's stunningly bold and successful attacks on several Russian airfields.
I hope that the authors of our latest strategic defence review, published yesterday, note the raid's lesson, not only about courage, but about the way drones, costing only tens of thousands of pounds, can cut their way through steel which costs many millions.
It is clear from the review and from the way that Sir Keir Starmer talks about it that he does not seriously believe there will be war with Russia in the foreseeable future.
He is anxious, yes, and supportive of Ukraine, but firmer in tone about the need not to make big spending promises than he is about the need to confront Putin.
His is not a wicked position: it remains unlikely that Russia will directly attack the United Kingdom.
But the sobering fact is that those Nato countries which border Russia do quite definitely fear Russian attack and most of them are preparing accordingly. We should pay attention because these are the nations which know the Russians best.
Militarily, we are helping countries like Estonia and Lithuania, but are we learning enough from them about the reality of the threat? As Nato members, we are bound to treat an attack on them as an attack on all and therefore to come to their aid. Could we?
They – and Ukraine itself – should now become our teachers, rather than the other way round.
The history of Russian behaviour stretching back to Stalin and even to Tsarist times, and also what Putin has done already, should instruct us in the danger.
It is a very, very big thing to try to change the borders of Europe by force. Putin did not content himself with the 'minor incursions' which President Biden foolishly said, early on in proceedings, might be all right. His attack on Ukraine is an absolute and deliberate defiance of the basis of the post-1945 peace.
One of the terrifying things is that President Trump seems not to understand this. We think we do, but we are still not facing the hard military realities. Currently, Russia recruits about 40,000 men a month. We struggle to recruit 7,000 in a year. We are still not serious.
I do not doubt that Sir Keir wants to stop Putin's progress, but the Review does not suggest he knows how.
Junior doctors dislike being so-called because, they say, the name makes them sound inferior. So they are now officially called 'resident' doctors, reflecting their base in one hospital. I notice that the new name has not taken on. Headlines still use the word 'junior'. Perhaps neither name is satisfactory. I have another suggestion. How about calling them 'striking doctors'? It is true that there have been one or two past incidents of 'industrial action' (1975, 2016) by junior doctors, but it is only in the past two years that this has become endemic, arriving in wave after wave.
Now the doctors threaten another strike, despite winning a 22.3 per cent rise last year. They want another 28 per cent. The traditional doctors' taboo against striking is fading.
That means that striking doctors are ceasing to be professionals. The privileges of being in a profession and the respect in which a profession is held depend on self-restraint and self-imposed standards which are higher than those of the ordinary worker. If a doctor strikes, he or she is breaking their sacred duty to patients. This is true whether or not the particular pay claim is justified. A doctor who refuses to do his duty thereby forfeits respect.
In the longer term, this means that NHS doctors will also do less well financially. If they behave just like any old grumpy public-sector interest group, they will be treated accordingly, both by government and by the public.
The decline of respect for doctors is the natural consequence of the way the NHS is constructed. From its inception, it has put the interests of the bureaucracy above those of the patient and of the profession. Since Covid-19, the demoralisation, which has been building for 80 years, has become pervasive.