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A Parliamentary committee warning that the UK is unprepared to defend itself from invasion might normally be considered extremely unwise as it reveals weakness to enemies – right?

So why has the Commons’ Defence Committee done it?

The logical answer is: to soften up the public ahead of a new wave of military spending, manufacturing and mobilisation.

Here’s the BBC:

“In a highly critical assessment, the defence committee said the UK is “nowhere near” where it needs to be to defend itself and allies, especially at a time when security threats to Europe are “significant”.

“The report found that the UK is failing to meet its Nato obligations, and falling “far short of its claimed leadership position”.

“The report was published as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) identified prospective locations for six new munitions factories, part of a strategy to ramp up domestic defence production.

“Committee chair Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi said: “Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, unrelenting disinformation campaigns, and repeated incursions into European airspace mean that we cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand.”

““Wars aren’t won just by generals, but by the whole of the population getting behind the Armed Forces and playing our part,” he added.

““We are making defence an engine for growth, unambiguously backing British jobs and British skills as we make the UK better ready to fight and better able to deter future conflicts,” the defence secretary [John Healey] will say.”

Announcing that “the UK is practically defenceless” would normally be considered the sort of information officials bury deep under “nothing to see here” spin. But two things are going on…

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This is an officially sanctioned alarm call

• to pressure the government into spending more, faster;
• to justify upcoming budget increases; and
• to shape public opinion so that higher defence spending becomes politically acceptable

This is why Dhesi is using rhetorical flourishes about “burying our heads in the sand” and “the public getting behind the Armed Forces”. It’s a mobilisation narrative. And it aligns perfectly with Starmer’s established “war footing” posture.

So although the content sounds like a national-security breach, in practice it is a strategic release to justify policy and budgets.

And it appears to be co-ordinated with the release of information intended to strike fear into citizens, including:

Spying and cyber-attacks from China, and

Russia sending naval vessels into UK waters, as announced by Healey.

It is also a defence-industry sales pitch

The BBC’s story flows neatly from “We’re dangerously unprepared” to “Here are all the factories we’re going to build.”

This is classic agenda management. The “panic” sets up the “solution”, and the solution is conveniently aligned with:

• Private contractors building munitions plants,
• New drone factories,
• Explosives production lines returning to the UK, and
• Healey’s upcoming speech

This isn’t journalism exposing weakness; it’s PR disguised as warning.

Defence is not an “engine for growth”

Public investment in housing, health, education, green energy, infrastructure, and social care produces much higher multipliers – often well above 2.

Military procurement tends to be

• geographically concentrated (few regions benefit)
• capital-intensive rather than labour-intensive
• tied up in long procurement cycles with huge overheads
• dependent on private contractors extracting profit
• poor at generating spillover benefits to the rest of the economy.

Even the US – the world’s biggest military funder – sees extremely weak economic returns from defence budgets, with manufacturing, childcare, health and infrastructure all delivering more growth per dollar.

Healey saying defence is “an engine for growth” is essentially political theatre, not economics. At best, munitions factories create pockets of local employment; they do not drive national prosperity.

There is no upside to this story

• defence contractors,
• constituency MPs promised a new factory,
• a government wanting to justify rising military budgets,
• politicians wanting to look tough, and
• media outlets happy to amplify a narrative of external threat.

For the public, the story says

• the UK cannot defend itself,
• the UK relies too heavily on the US,
• civil defence is inadequate,
• missile defence barely exists, and
• the public may soon be asked to “play our part”.

This is not reassuring or empowering.

But its function isn’t reassurance — it’s conditioning.

This is softening the public up for

• increased defence spending,
• industrial policy shifts,
• militarised rhetoric, and
• potentially more intrusive involvement of government in civilian life under the banner of “resilience” and “readiness”.

The report isn’t a threat to national security – because the aim isn’t to expose weakness but to manufacture consent for a more militarised UK.

And the “engine for growth” claim is, economically, nonsense — but politically convenient nonsense.

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