Keir Starmer has plenty of time to govern before the next election – for some perspective, there have to be two Australian federal elections and one US presidential election before the next general election has to be held here. That means on 5 July 2028 Starmer will probably be the Prime Minister who celebrates the 80th anniversary of the founding of the NHS. The NHS, like the modern system of social security, was the product of wartime thinking. As William Beveridge said: “A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.”
For now, this impending milestone is an important reminder that a warfare state needs a welfare state. As we await the Spring Statement the government’s watchword is “times have changed”. And, the Prime Minister has risen to the challenge of Donald Trump’s disengagement from Europe – imaginatively exploiting the US leader’s fondness for the British royal family while leading European countries into agreement on defence autonomy. He diverted funds from international aid to defence too, a move that met little resistance inside or outside the Labour Party.
But on the home front Starmer has not played his hand so well. The money being spent on defence is a boom for Barrow, Blackpool, Bristol, Derby, Dunfermline and more; places where Labour faces a range of opponents and where muscular patriotism could form a powerful dividing line. This hasn’t been successfully exploited. Instead the general miserabilism Labour ministers adopted last year has fed through to voters. Despite Chancellor Rachel Reeves injecting £70bn into public spending in her first Budget last year, plenty of British voters believe the country has entered a new age of austerity. This view is particularly held by pensioners who seem not to have noticed that the triple lock increase in the state pension this year is larger than the winter fuel payment they lost last year.
The government has added to this pessimistic mood by focusing on benefit cuts in the run-up to the Spring Statement. It is well known within the Department for Work and Pensions that every £1bn saving means the loss of £1,000 for a million people. And most households would certainly miss £1,000.
In the case of sickness and disability benefits, the proposed £5bn savings are being found from around one million claimants, meaning the loss in income is estimated to be between £5,000-6,000 per person, probably the highest losses ever for individuals as a result of benefit cuts. Despite the severity of these changes there has not yet been any explanation from the government. There may well be a moral case for supporting sick people into work, but we have yet to hear any government minister set out why there should be a reduction in the financial support for the very real and permanent costs of living with a disability. The hardest question in politics is, “Why?” In the absence of an answer the government seems like a parent faced with an intransigent child, saying “because!”
The tragedy is that there is an alternative narrative available, if only Labour argued more forcefully. “We are the workers’ party and we believe that the balance between capital and labour is unfair. That is why we are increasing the living wage, raising taxes on the returns from capital rather than the returns on labour, and giving new rights to workers.” Ideology gives a spine to your arguments and purpose to your actions.
From this positioning, it would be a simple step to a “Khaki Spring Statement” – explicitly grounded in the argument that things have changed in geopolitics. Claiming the credit for the economic boost that defence spending was bringing, while also noting that climate crisis is a security threat and that the rapid move to decarbonise the economy provides energy security while it fuelled economy growth. This bullish international stance, it should be made clear, could be accompanied by an expansion of the welfare state at home, with childcare being out in a sound financial footing and the expansion of breakfast clubs and free school meals creating a new frontier for the welfare state.
The defence and welfare frame would allow the argument that defence spending should be ringfenced outside the normal fiscal rules because, after all, things had changed. And anyway all warfare states need welfare states.
[See more: The warfare state can rescue Britain]
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