09.07.2026

Tanks and aircraft carriers are as outdated as bearskins and redcoats

Drones versus butter

Like his predecessor, Andy Burnham is committed to spending more on the military. Communists, on the other hand, say ‘not a person, not a penny’ for the bourgeois armed forces - a slogan we combine with the call for a popular militia. Eddie Ford explains

“Putin will be laughing at Starmer’s pitiful defence plan,” said a Telegraph headline¹ in response to the government finally publishing its much-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP).²

Of course, there has been much agitation from the conservative press, and retired generals and admirals (speaking ‘on behalf of’ serving admirals and generals) who want more weapons, because enough is never enough, when it comes to the military and its budget. This lobby decided long ago that Sir Keir Starmer had failed to ramp up military spending with enough hard cash, even if the DIP is billed as the most significant uplift for a generation, committing £298 billion over the next four years.

But what the military discontents really want is new style weapons, because it is true, from their perspective, that the Ukraine war has revolutionised warfare. Yes, there were already hints of that way back in Afghanistan against the Soviet army, with the Mujahideen equipped with Stinger missiles. However, what we have seen in Ukraine is something qualitively different. It is a sort of combination of World War I trench warfare plus drones, drones, drones - which have largely replaced artillery shells, manned aircraft and tanks.

Shortfall

Running across 80 pages, the DIP, published in the run-up to Nato’s July 7-8 Ankara conference, will be one of Starmer’s last acts as prime minister - perhaps he even views it as a possible defining event in terms of his premiership.³ Regardless, he has promised to increase defence spending - or war spending, to be more honest (like Donald Trump). Britain has been forced into taking this course by the US, not only by Trump. The accusation is that other Nato countries have been enjoying a ‘free ride’ at the expense of the US. Hence the commitment to up the percentage of GDP going to the military: Britain now has a target of 3.5% by 2035.

Anyhow, the treasury agreed to stump up an extra £1.5 billion to the ministry of defence in the wake of John Healey resigning as defence secretary last month, pushing the total amount of extra money for the DIP to £15 billion in “spending power” over four years - but only £11.6 billion of that amount is new money, with the rest comprising a reallocation of existing resources. In a further sign that Starmer is trying to placate his conservative critics and spend even more money on rearming, the DIP says that “funding and plans” behind a goal to push defence spending to 3% of GDP in the next parliament - from around 2.3% now - will be revealed in the next spending review, expected in 2027, where defence will naturally be the “number one priority”.

But, of course, that will be a decision for Andy Burnham to make (unless he falls under a bus), but like his predecessor he says he is committed to “fully fund” the DIP and as prime minister there will be “no compromise on the security of the nation”. Yet that still does not detract from the fact that Starmer has left Burnham with a pretty rotten hand, because there is a shortfall (or ‘black hole’) of £4.7 billion in terms of the budget. Speaking in his first interview since winning in Makerfield, Burnham confirmed reports that he was not told about the spending gulf when Starmer’s government briefed him on the DIP - admitting that he “didn’t have all of the details”.⁴

Whether Burnham’s pledge was enough for the military chiefs remains to be seen, but it will inevitably trigger months of speculation about tax rises, spending cuts or tweaks to borrowing rules that Burnham could enact to raise the funds in the next budget, which is expected in October or November. But the former mayor of Manchester has already said that he will stick to Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledge not to raise income tax rates, national insurance or VAT - though it has been reported that Burnham will be looking for “perhaps more flexibility in how the fiscal rules are applied”.⁵

Either way, Burnham will quickly be confronted by the unavoidable question of priorities - guns or butter? Or, more accurately for the times we live in, drones or butter?

Timeline

But we already know the answer to that, as we have had stories about infrastructure investment being cancelled or delayed.⁶ Stories about green measures suffering the same fate by being scrapped altogether or given a good kick down the road. This tells you that the Burnham government may have some wriggle room, but it is extraordinarily narrow. Maybe he can get away with much better presentation or performative gestures such as “No10 North”.⁷ Perhaps he might tinker around with this particular version of the DIP. But, when it comes to the “reindustrialisation” of the north and “galvanising” the British, economy, it is all bullshit. So, Burnham is indeed Starmer with another face.

Echoing the military chiefs, the outgoing prime minister himself has given us a timeline - to be ready for a possible war with Russia by 2030. But, of course, the top brass believe that the money they are being given is insufficient to rearm at the pace necessary. Indeed, ex-military tops have popped up in the media saying that, unless we have this DIP right now we will be unable to resist a Russian invasion.⁸ The claim is that Russian stormtroopers and Cossacks will be marching through the streets of London in 2030, and Vladimir Putin doing what Adolf Hitler could not do in 1939-40 by picking out the Senate building in London’s University College to be his new headquarters?⁹ Total nonsense, of course, but it serves the purpose of getting us hyped up to accept new arms spending.

The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, stresses the need to focus more on autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence to ensure the military is “fit for the next war, not the last one”. The UK will scrap some older weapons and kit, including the very expensive Storm Shadow cruise missiles and a range of helicopters. The new plans will not include funding for new frigates, as it prioritises smaller, budget warships and drones instead. Well, objectively, that seems sensible, as that really is 20th century naval warfare. But instead they are going to go for some sort of hub, an equivalent of a frigate that controls aerial drones and sea drones. There is also talk of a sixth-generation fighter aircraft too, one that controls semi-autonomous drones. But there are legitimate grounds for scepticism here. Surely the era of ultra-expensive high-tech aircraft has come to an end. For example, the present-day F-35s can do everything: it is stealth, a bomber, can take off vertically. You name it, it can do it … but it would not last long in a theatre of war like Ukraine, where both sides have cheap killer drones and shoulder-launched missiles.

It is the same with aircraft carriers. They dominated naval warfare from World War II onwards, but how would they fare if they had coming at them a swarm of drones - not 100 or 200, but 1,000 or 2,000? Have they got the ability or the support fleet that would be needed to shoot down such numbers? Well, maybe yes, if they can be protected by laser beams or some other such technology which is, at the moment, still very much at the drawing board stage. At the moment it is hard to escape the conclusion that they are highly vulnerable craft in the same way that battleships became highly vulnerable to air attack or submarine attack in World War II.

Intimidate

So what is the CPGB’s position on ‘defence’? We do not come out like the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and organisations on the Labour left and call for a halving of arms spending. We do not, to use a throwaway figure, demand that ‘only’ £150 billion be spent on the means of mass destruction over the years 2026-30. Taking hold of a good phrase and adopting it for modern purposes, we say, ‘Not a person, not a penny, for the bourgeois army’. We do not want them to have even a peashooter.

Instead, we call for a popular militia. Of course, that will need finance - but that does not commit us now to voting for a war budget for a popular militia. We would vote for the principle of a popular militia, which basically means that every adult who is fit and of an agreed age has an obligation to serve. By that we do not mean just someone armed with the equivalent of a Lee Enfield like a modern-day version of Dad’s army. Rather, we are talking about a popular militia being equipped on the basis that it replaces the standing army - which requires the availability of drones, missiles, radar, nuclear bunkers, satellite links, etc, etc.

True, such an organisation will not have global reach, but nevertheless we are talking about a serious armed force, and it can be done. Generally speaking, one of our models is Switzerland, where every adult is obliged to serve in the army if they are over a certain age and be available for a call-up, keeping their firearm under lock and key in their home. And the country has tank traps, dragons teeth and nuclear bunkers - it is very well defended. In fact, it has more than 370,000 nuclear bunkers - more than any other country in the world - enough to shelter every member of the 9.15 million population.¹⁰

Not that Swiss communists would be obliged to vote in favour of the budget for the Schweizer Armee. No, on the contrary, the principled position would be to either abstain or vote against. Why? Because war, even a war of defence, is the continuation of politics, and historically, and at the present moment, those politics are the politics of the bourgeoise (as expressed through the permanent coalition, the Zauberformel, of the mainstream parties).

True, the popular militia is not much use in fighting foreign wars. Good! But that does not apply, when it comes to defending the home territory, because you can do that in depth and en masse. As we are not pacifists, we do not ignore the military question - you cannot successfully stop an invading army with a flower … or even a revolutionary speech. Yes, we are quite prepared to fight, but first and foremost we want a revolution and towards that end we bank on two, interlinked, strategic pillars: firstly, winning a clear majority, not least through standing in elections and, secondly, splitting, bringing over the popular militia to our side (why we demand the regular election of officers).

We certainly want that revolution to be as peaceful as possible, because otherwise it is our side that would tend to suffer the most. And the chances are that, the stronger we are in terms of our ability to inflict violence, the less likely that the other side would attack.

Marx and Engels used the term “slave owners’ rebellion”, of course, when they looked at the Civil War in America. They expected the bourgeoisie and the landlord class in Britain to be tempted by that option, even though they talked about the possibility of peaceful revolution. Hence they wanted to intimidate the class enemy.

In other words, don’t do it - don’t even be tempted to start a civil war - because if you do we will crush you. Essentially, that is what our military programme is designed to achieve.