Has the defence secretary overdone it by warning Britain could not stop an enemy invasion?

Labour may be laying it on a bit thick about the terrible state of our national defences inherited from the Tories, says John Rentoul

Labour is in danger of demoralising the nation by saying that the Conservatives have left everything in a much worse state than expected. The public finances were “the worst inheritance since the Second World War”, according to Rachel Reeves. The prisons were full-to-bursting, requiring emergency measures.

And now our defences are apparently in such disrepair, we would not be able to fight off an invasion.

What was John Healey, the defence secretary, thinking? He is known in Labour circles as the very definition of a safe pair of hands, the keystone in the arch of the party’s presentation as strong on national security. Pro-armed forces; pro-Nato; pro-US.

So why did he say that the UK “has essentially become very skilled and ready to conduct military operations – what we’ve not been ready to do is to fight; unless we are ready to fight we are not in shape to deter”?

Mainly, it must be suspected, because he was following the new government’s template: blame everything on the Tories.

Labour’s messaging has been crude since the election. When Angela Rayner stood in for Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions this week, her answer to almost every question included the phrase “14 years of failure”.

When Healey was interviewed by Politico’s PowerPlay podcast, therefore, he said that the state of the armed forces when he became defence secretary in July was “far worse, with far deeper problems, than we expected”.

As with the public finances and the prisons system, there is some truth in this. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, with its impeccable impartial credentials, has confirmed that the in-year shortfall is indeed worse than Reeves could have known before the election.

Alex Chalk, the former justice secretary, has confirmed that he urged Rishi Sunak, the week before he called the election, to order the early release of prisoners. We knew the prisons were nearly full – but neither the voters nor the opposition knew how close we had already come to the police being told to stop arresting people.

So I can believe that the armed forces were in a poorer state of readiness than any outsiders could have known. I came across senior people in the defence establishment before the election warning that recruitment and retention of armed forces personnel were in crisis.

In particular, I was told that the viability of “continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence” was close to breaking down. Lengthening tours at sea are putting recruits off crewing the nuclear-armed submarines that are needed to make sure that one of the fleet of four is always on active patrol.

Healey knew that, too – although in opposition, he was careful to avoid portraying the country as unable to defend itself. Now, curiously, he seems readier to talk the country down and to blame the Tories than he was before the election.

He and his colleagues seem to have overdone it, however. Instead of saying that the Tories have left our defences weakened, and that he is working flat out to strengthen them, he has said that our army – smaller than at any time since the Napoleonic wars – is not “ready to fight”. Not only that, but he conceded that it is taking the new government “a while to get going”.

I can see why he said it. The debate about a war-fighting capability is a long-familiar one in defence theory. The revival of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the Seventies was driven by a change in Nato doctrine: because the Nato powers decided that their troops would be unable to stop the USSR’s forces sweeping across Europe, they started work on strategies that depended on the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

It has long been the case that Britain’s armed forces would find it hard to resist a full-scale invasion, but then it has also long been the case that such an invasion is extremely unlikely – and that if it were to become more likely, there would be time for the country to respond.

But for Healey to throw such thoughts into an interview in effect blaming the Tories for leaving us defenceless was irresponsible. It is bad enough Reeves talking about the country’s finances as though it was in recession, and Shabana Mahmood genuinely had no choice but to frighten people by releasing some prisoners who should not be released early.

But for the defence secretary to imply that the Russians will be on the beaches of Kent soon after they have rolled over the Ukrainian Steppe is going too far.

Healey should now explain how he plans to improve our ability to fight “military operations” – which, fortunately, is the most that our armed forces are likely to be asked to do in the foreseeable future.