Last week, the British election went nuclear. Michael Fallon, a Conservative and the UK’s defence secretary, made the emotive claim that a Labour government might “stab the UK in the back” by refusing to fund the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent.
Mr Fallon was reprising a theme from the 1980s — when the Tories successfully painted Labour as weak on defence and wobbly on nuclear weapons. But the modern Conservatives should not be allowed to pose as doughty defenders of British military strength. On the contrary, the present government has presided over a drastic reduction in defence capacity — confirming a downward trend begun by Labour.
The British army is scheduled to decline to just 82,000 troops — its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars. Sir Nick Harvey, a Liberal Democrat who served as armed forces minister in the current coalition government, says further defence cuts in the next parliament could see the army shrink to just 60,000. The navy, which had 70 destroyers and frigates in 1977, is down to 19 such vessels. It could no longer put together a task force of the size that Britain needed during the Falklands war of 1982. As for the air force, a new book by the BBC’s Mark Urban says the Libyan conflict of 2011 demonstrated that “a mission by six bombers . . . is about the limit of the RAF’s long-range strike capability”.