Defence provides the only credible path to reindustrialisation

This past week, while out canvassing in the Makerfield constituency, I was asked what a progressive defence policy could actually look like. So I decided to write about it.

The starting point must always be the needs of the country. In my view, Britain needs to spend more on defence - because the threats facing Europe and the wider democratic world have fundamentally changed. The lesson of the last decade is that peace cannot be secured by diplomacy alone. Deterrence matters. And deterrence requires credible capability.

But the argument for higher defence spending runs into three main problems for progressives. First, the fiscal climate is tight, with little political appetite for major new spending commitments in the short term on defence. Second, the loudest advocates for defence investment are often conservative voices. Third, many people understandably see the threats as distant - geographically remote from everyday life in cities and towns across Britain.

So the question is: how do progressives make the case?

Andy Burnham often speaks about the damage caused by deindustrialisation - the hollowing out of skilled work and manufacturing capacity across large parts of the country. Defence policy offers one of the clearest opportunities we have to reverse that decline through a serious programme of reindustrialisation.

Take Project Grayburn, an early-stage procurement programme to replace the British Armed Forces’ ageing rifle. At present, Britain does not have the industrial capacity needed to deliver that capability domestically. But we could build it by ensuring that foreign bidders onshore production, invest in supply chains and develop sovereign industrial capability. That would not just strengthen national security; it would strengthen economic resilience too.

The defence sector already demonstrates what this can look like. Defence jobs are disproportionately located outside London and the South East, often in communities that have experienced decades of underinvestment. They are typically highly skilled, unionised and better paid than average local wages. These are precisely the kinds of jobs a modern industrial strategy should want to create.

And unlike many other sectors, the government has unusual leverage in defence because the state is the customer. That means ministers can shape procurement around broader national objectives: where factories are built, where jobs and apprenticeships are created, where research clusters emerge, and where long-term investment flows. In effect, it creates the possibility for a modern industrial strategy rooted in public purpose: a contemporary form of Keynesianism built around sovereign capability.

Similarly, the government also ultimately decides on where capability is exported, with licences having to go through rigid checks across multiple departments. While the process may require improvement, it creates a dynamic of a government that is both a buyer and seller of defence capability. But be wary - the idea that the UK can make up for its own spending shortfall by selling more than it buys is based on a flawed conception of defence economics. The reality is that if the UK is not willing to purchase its own capability, then why would anybody else?

For too long, progressives have often treated defence as something separate from economic justice. In reality, the two are deeply connected. A country that cannot make things, train skilled workers or sustain strategic industries ultimately becomes weaker both economically and geopolitically.

That does not mean abandoning progressive values. It means recognising that security - economic, industrial and national - is itself a progressive concern. The challenge is not choosing between social investment and national defence. The challenge is designing a defence policy that delivers both.

Reg Pula, is a member of the New Diplomacy Project’s Executive Committee, Head of Defence and Security at Rud Pedersen, Executive Director of Labour Friends of Kosovo and the Western Balkans, and a former defence and foreign policy advisor to the UK Labour Party.

Image courtesy of Andrew Linnett Flickr