The case for the National Readiness Bill
Britain is living under the shadow of external threats greater than we have seen for at least 40 years. State-sponsored attacks on our democratic unity and our essential infrastructure occur on a weekly basis, almost entirely unseen by the public. Trust in the United States as a security guarantor, or even a broadly aligned power, has fractured.
Our best-informed analysts warn that NATO must prepare for an open Russian attack by 2030; our allies on the eastern frontier are deadly serious in their belief that this is what Russia is escalating towards if its strategy, or ours, does not change. If we do not prepare – if we do not shift gears to higher levels of national readiness and coordination – we will not deter a continent-wide conflagration. A war that in the worst case could shatter NATO and render Europe into the hands of corrupt, far-right imperialism.
Even trust in the British state to represent and defend our shared values and interests is under assault. By politicians weaponising division. By attacks on our resilience in the information domain through atomising and polarising social media algorithms. And by the failure of our institutions to wake up to the threat and take the action necessary to adapt and survive.
The primary danger with arguments like these is not that some, mired in complacency, will dismiss them as scaremongering. It is that the scale and immediacy of this challenge, coupled with an austerity-hollowed state, can seem insurmountable. And rekindling hope, rather than starving it, is equally important for national readiness.
What is the Defence Readiness Bill for?
The 2025 Strategic Defence Review recommended both a Defence Readiness Bill (DRB) and a national conversation to raise public awareness of the threats to the UK. However, the connection between the two has remained obscure, and there is now a risk that necessary reforms will be impeded by a nascent division on the left. This division does not concern the malign rump of fake ‘anti-imperialists’ and coddled isolationists who deny the Russian threat. It is between those who emphasise rearmament and reindustrialisation, and those who, largely because of their scepticism about the defence industry and procurement, instead emphasise resilience and social cohesion.
This is a false dichotomy, and one that progressives must swiftly overcome in a structured, strategic manner. Both readiness reforms and a national conversation need to be delivered with urgency, and in tight coordination with the promised increases in defence and security investment. As difficult but necessary decisions are made to protect Britain, they must be accompanied by a vivid explanation of how intimately connected they are to the fast-changing world on our screens and to the security of our communities. Given the finding of the Good Growth Foundation that just 10% of voters rank defence and security as a top issue, a tight linkage between spending, communications, and legislative action is essential.
On a policy level, the DRB is needed because the Cold War apparatus for planning for and coordinating in the event of war was dismantled, and the meagre tools that replaced it within the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 are entirely inadequate for today.
The depth and breadth of the changes that could be needed should not be underestimated, encompassing all forms of critical national infrastructure; roles for every level of government; state direction across much of the economy; and plans to widen volunteer involvement in defence and security beyond the military reserves. Paul Mason has provided a must-read sketch. These changes go so far beyond traditional defence that the government should urgently explore whether cross-departmental omnibus legislation will be required, for which ‘National Readiness Bill’ would be a more apt title.
The DRB will accompany a new ‘War Book’ to be activated alongside emergency powers. But in designing and gaining public support for these reforms, British politics must move past certain outdated beliefs. That a full-scale war with the likes of Russia would be short. That the distinction between war and peace is a clean one in an era of hybrid threats. And that the most stringent emergency powers would be politically sustainable for long, except in the most extreme scenarios, where missiles fall daily on British cities as in Ukraine.
A likely consequence is that, while any assumption of emergency powers must rightly meet a high bar, a spectrum of powers will be necessary. Such a spectrum would enable us to build resilience and deterrence against an escalation in ‘sub-threshold’ warfare such as cyber, information, and sabotage attacks, and more effectively encompass the present situation within the national conversation, rather than focusing solely on ‘what ifs’. Given the frequency and variety of Russian attacks that have already been perpetrated, the high bar necessary to justify shifting gears without going full throttle has likely already been met; unfortunately, those higher gears do not yet exist. They must be invented.
While elements like the War Book will necessarily be secret in large part, the principles and public-facing institutional and policy shifts need not be. Indeed, they must not be if they are to meet the challenge of a more atomised society and attract widespread understanding and durable support.
Resonance with the progressive moment
The Labour government’s political vulnerability under Keir Starmer has arisen in large part because our country is being pulled towards the extremes, with trust in state delivery and leadership critically low. This would be a barrier to any stable governing agenda, but it has particularly impacted the post-2024 mission-based, delivery-first approach. And these factors – political vulnerabilities for Labour – equally contribute to our national vulnerability to external attack.
The government cannot address the electoral threat from Reform or the Greens without being more political and making bigger arguments about the genuinely radical steps necessary to protect what we love about Britain in this dangerous world. And, as incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham argues, we can only do so effectively through a more inclusive approach to politics. If the problems for party and country are similar; perhaps the solutions are too.
Burnham’s first major foreign policy intervention coheres strongly with this approach, combining a fusion of resilience, security, social cohesion and defence objectives with a strong emphasis on “levelling with the public [and] engaging them in decisions” and preparing for the threat “using the ingenuity and talents of the British people”.
Another key resonance with Burnham’s project is the importance of devolution in building national readiness. Devolved authorities are not only essential for most forms of resilience and preparedness planning. They also have the potential to be superior communicators about the largest threats locally and better mobilisers of volunteer response. What better way to bring the threat home than by informing citizens in every part of the UK about the potential impact of war on their major local employer, their water and electricity suppliers, or their local hospital? And what better way to rebuild trust in the state than by using those same devolved channels of communication to highlight how each area is benefitting from defence and security investments?
Finally, in an era of political fragmentation, a national conversation on such weighty issues cannot be tightly controlled from the centre. Doing so would only diminish trust, not rebuild it. So, while Labour must lead this process, both cross-party and non-partisan voices will need to be brought in from an early stage. This is another reason to resist the temptation to wait until there is a draft Bill with every detail agreed internally; internal agreement will be far from sufficient. By doing so, we would miss the opportunity to use the DRB as a focal point for a whole-of-society conversation and risk fatally weakening the DRB itself. There is little distinction between policymaking and consensus-building political communication here; while the technical details matter, if the conversation about the policy isn’t done right, the policy will not achieve its aims.
In the international arena, public confidence in our enduring alliance with the United States is dwindling, while our growing strategic links to European and global allies have remained poorly articulated. Using the DRB as a framework and focus for a national conversation will enable the government to shape a renewed understanding about what the British interest is within this challenging geopolitical moment. In doing so, progressives can put our internationalism to work too, drawing fresh connections between local, regional, and national risks and the continental and global alliances that can help us defend against them.
Progressives and the Labour government can best rise to this moment of national peril if we break it down into more articulable, solvable problems, showing how we all have a role to play. In doing so, we can prove that Britons’ fundamental trust in one another is unbroken, and that the state can be rebuilt to serve us once again.
Dr Ben Bessey works with a Labour Member of Parliament. Prior to a decade supporting Labour MPs with a focus on foreign, development, security and defence policy, he completed a Philosophy PhD on global justice.
Photo: Corporal Andrew Morris (RAF)| Credit: MoD/Crown via Flickr