Can Britain afford to lead European defence? Panelists weigh the JEF, US retreat and rearmament costs

HMS Prince of Wales, docked in Oslo, is the venue for this debate on whether Britain can afford to lead European defence. Host Lucy Fisher opens by saying that, in the face of Moscow's increasing risk appetite, Britain wants to spearhead Europe's defence, and asks whether the country can afford to lead and whether it is ready.

The carrier costs about £3.5 billion and is the Royal Navy's most expensive piece of equipment, with a flight deck large enough to fit three football pitches. Oslo was chosen because Norway and this part of the continent share a land border with Russia. The central threat named in the episode is the growing campaign of hybrid warfare that Vladimir Putin's regime is waging against Europe.

Charles Clover describes the Joint Expeditionary Force, a grouping of northern European countries led by Britain, as a hedge against a failure of will within NATO. The countries most exposed to a political or military crisis with Russia want to be able to act jointly, and a smaller, like-minded group can organise a response more quickly than the alliance as a whole.

Robert Shrimsley adds a political dimension for the UK, which has left the European Union but remains an important NATO member. The JEF allows Britain to show that it still matters and is building alliances through its military capacity. He describes the carrier as a venue for convening power and British leadership, and the JEF as a group that sees Britain as a natural leader.

Robert Shrimsley notes that the JEF's members are Britain, the Nordics, the Baltics and the Netherlands, with Canada possibly joining. Germany, which has a large Baltic coastline and would be a natural partner, has publicly said it has not joined because it does not want to duplicate NATO and considers the alliance sufficient. Some grumbling exists that the JEF is a British vehicle, and Germany does not want to join a grouping of ten countries.

Panelists also heard that the Baltic countries oppose Canada joining, because they want an alliance focused on the high north and the Baltics rather than the North Atlantic. The question raised is whether this subgrouping could make NATO weaker rather than stronger, since its members are relatively homogeneous in how they see the threat, and adding more countries makes it less manageable.

Robert Shrimsley says the Atlantic Future Forum, a conference running for several years in different locations, has drawn many security and defence figures from the Western alliance, and that the striking feature this year is the absence of Americans. Two or three years ago, the national security adviser or deputy national security adviser, or other figures of importance from the Washington defence establishment, would have attended. This year there are almost no Americans of note, and they were not present last year either, when the conference was held in the Pacific.

Shrimsley argues that this reflects how Washington thinks about European defence. Although some celebrated last week the possibility that Trump is now at bay, with two years left in his term, he does not believe the old America is coming back, and he says policymakers do not think so either. He reports that American politicians took the main lesson from the midterm elections to be that they lost because they got involved in a foreign war. Their main strategic rival is China, not Russia. European debates now focus on what to do if America is absent or delayed.

Lucy Fisher points to a recent wobble in American policy: in the past month or so, Trump signed a deal with Putin ahead of the midterm elections and suggested that Zelensky might need to step down as president of Ukraine. In Europe, she says, the talk is about Moscow's growing appetite for hybrid warfare against the continent, including arson, meddling with subsea infrastructure and cyber attacks that are costing European economies billions of pounds a year.

She also cites a drone attack attempted at Leipzig airport this summer, which seemed a very alarming escalation, and says she has not seen anything like it since. She says it is very concerning that Moscow's nefarious activity seems to be on the rise.

Charles Clover says it is important to be able to attribute these attacks, and notes that Russia has started saying more that it did them. At first, he says, Europe was very hesitant to attribute what was happening to Russia. He describes Russia's point of view: it is simply reacting to what NATO is doing. NATO supplies technology that Ukraine uses to hit Russian rear areas, where Russia manufactures things and produces energy. Russia, in turn, hits Ukraine's rear area, which is Europe and is Ukraine's economic and manufacturing hub. He says there is something symmetrical in Russian logic, and that the big question is how far each side escalates.

Shrimsley, who says he does not want to justify what is happening in Ukraine, offers a historical comparison. He recalls that the fear of Russia once centred on incursions into West Germany or sweeping into Warsaw Pact countries. Now, he says, Russia is not even succeeding in sweeping through territory it held as the Soviet Union, so although the threat and fear of Russia are being built up, rightly so, it is also a country still to some extent at bay.

Charles Clover describes a Norwegian vice admiral, Runa Anderson, who said that from what he has seen of the Russian navy and army in the high north, they are at bay. They have retreated to what he called a bastion on the Arctic peninsula. Russia has drone nets over its border posts and sandbags, and has hardened them because it expects attack. It uses military ships to escort its merchant ships and shadow-fleet tankers. He said they are incredibly harassed and stressed as a military force, and that NATO has tripled its forces in the high north in the last three years.

Clover says the admiral's point was that the sides should pay attention to sensible escalation and avoid doing something that Russia might misunderstand at a strategic level. Clover says he does not want to apologise for Russia or suggest that NATO should not threaten it, but that the consequences of too rapid escalation must be considered. He describes the way Russia has been acting as escalating by pushing and pushing.

Lucy Fisher says the UK has had a series of near misses recently. In the summer, a Russian warship fired salvos near a yacht carrying British pensioners in the Channel; she says the shots were near the vessel rather than at it. There have also been Russian jets buzzing Royal Navy ships. Fisher says she has been finding out about the history of back channels between the UK and Russia. A hotline between the UK and Russian defence ministries used to be tested daily by a specific officer, but she understands it is not tested as frequently now. She has also learned that the head of the UK's secret intelligence service has occasional conversations with her Russian counterpart, but that this falls short of the regular, structured dialogue she says is being discussed.

Charles Clover says that part of the problem is that a hotline is of limited use without trust: when the other side says a move was a mistake, you have to believe them, and if you do not, a hotline does not necessarily help. He says he does not know what trust exists between the Russian and UK defence ministries at present, and that Russia is being very political about this. In its view, Britain does not matter and is a puny island, yet also the devil controlling Ukraine. Clover notes that the head of Russia's FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, said in March that Britain is the grand puppet master of Ukraine's special services.

Clover adds that when a parity arrangement between Britain and Russia is suggested, a hotline or red telephone, Russia scoffs. Its preferred parity is with Washington, which he says has always been its dream.

Lucy Fisher says she and Clover also spoke with Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the chief of the defence staff and head of the British military. One of his key messages was that the British public needs to play catch-up with European counterparts. He describes a sense that the UK is lagging behind others in Europe in understanding the threat. He links public understanding directly to defence spending: the public must be told why more investment is needed, and the lack of understanding may partly explain weak support for it.

Robert Shrimsley argues that the British public has responded well to government preparedness campaigns, and that governments must lead. He says the public will get behind leaders who make a reasonable case, but that the matter ultimately comes down to money. He recalls a speech at the end of the conference by Jens Stoltenberg, former NATO secretary general and now Norway's finance minister, who said the Cold War was won not by militaries but by economies, because one side had more and could grind the other down economically.

Shrimsley says many European economies are not in a position to spend what they want to spend. Norway is lucky, with a sovereign wealth fund; Britain is already spending up to its limits; and France's debt is worse. China and India are strong and growing, Russia still has its oil money, and Europe remains financially weaker than the size of its economy would suggest. He argues that politicians must tell the public that the spending is needed and must be paid for, and if they do not make those messages, they cannot complain that the public is not heeding them.

Charles Clover says the UK spends the largest proportion of any NATO nuclear-armed state's defence budget on its nuclear deterrent, at about 25 per cent of the defence budget. This is obviously squeezing the conventional forces. He argues that Britain does not get enough credit within NATO, because its nuclear deterrent is at the disposal of NATO, unlike the French deterrent, which is national. Britain still ranks near the bottom of NATO spending league tables partly because of the deterrent. He says the government and Parliament need to tackle the colossal expense of the deterrent.

Lucy Fisher says the deterrent is what gives Britain its place at the top table and the respect the Kremlin shows it, but it leaves conventional forces squeezed. She notes a revived debate about whether the UK, as a maritime nation, should concentrate more resources on its navy, being maritime first, and mentions a Prosperity Institute report making this argument and endorsement by Lord David Richards, a former head of the British army.

Charles Clover says he has been struck by the comparative costs of a hybrid navy, meaning ships that are mostly unmanned and controlled from elsewhere, often with a mother ship and a group of unmanned vessels analogous to drones. He argues there is potential there, as in drones, to drive down the cost of other areas of defence, and that there is a fundamental reappraisal of the arsenal. He asks whether it is really necessary to use the equivalent of Patriot missiles to shoot down a drone, and says the asymmetry seen in the Ukraine war has changed everyone's thinking.

Robert Shrimsley agrees that drones and a hybrid navy are cheaper, and that this is one of their attractions. He gives the example of buying 20 motorboats with rocket launchers, which he says cost a tenth of a Type 26 frigate, and asks why submarines should not be hunted with floating AI buoys instead of a frigate. He describes Ukraine's approach as cheap mass: if a hundred of these are launched and three get through, the result is still better than one big asset. He also questions the value of aircraft carriers and tanks, noting that carriers are very exposed and need many escorting ships, aircraft and submarines. Clover says Britain does not have enough F-35s to fill the carrier at present.

Lucy Fisher reports that John Foreman, a former defence attaché, called the concept glossy promotional imagery and said the technology remains completely unproven at sea. He said there are massive operational, legal, engineering, digital and logistical challenges, and she says there is a danger of pressing headlong into this idea and leaving oneself more exposed.

Shrimsley responds that Ukraine has sunk many Russian ships in the Black Sea using small motorboats carrying large amounts of explosives, so the approach can work. But he accepts Foreman's point, asking whether such boats would perform in five-metre waves in the North Sea, and suggests a few frigates would still be needed. Shrimsley also questions whether Britain, as a primarily maritime military, should degrade its air force, noting that air power should not be written off.

Asked whether Andy Burnham seems personally interested in defence, Shrimsley says defence is interested in him. He says the prime minister, who has been in office only about 100 days, is not the kind who goes out of his way to be photographed in military gear or in a jet fighter. Defence is not the topic he talks about most, because he correctly thinks voters are more concerned with their own cost of living.

Shrimsley warns that defence has a habit of catching up with prime ministers. He says that, although defence may not be the prime minister's natural territory and he may not yet have a feel for it, he will have to get there, because defence, security, resilience and related issues are the overriding theme of the coming years. If he spends his time being indifferent to it, he says, it will go badly wrong and earlier than he would want.

The discussion turns to the 2030 target of reaching 3 per cent of GDP for the military, which analysts say would mean an extra £11 billion a year for the armed forces. Defence secretary John Healey has so far indicated some innovative ways of getting there, which others call jiggery-pokery, including off-the-books funding through a new multilateral defence mechanism bank with the Netherlands. Shrimsley notes that Gordon Brown would have done this too, and that Healey also talks about a return to public-private partnerships, which is also controversial.

Shrimsley assumes that, given how Healey resigned from Keir Starmer's government over this and the noises he made in the budget, Healey believes he will get there one way or another. But when the figures are examined, he says, there is a question whether some of the money counted on will actually be there. The 2030 date falls after the next election; the target was originally meant to be reached in this parliament. Shrimsley says measuring defence spending as a percentage of GDP is a ridiculous way of doing it, since you should work out what you need and spend it, and that a shrinking economy would let the target be reached more quickly with less spending. He thinks the target will be reached but that it involves corner cutting and cheese-paring all the way.

In the closing segment, Shrimsley says he will focus on a review by Alan Milburn of how to deal with the 13 per cent or so of young people not in education, employment or training. The review is expected to make substantial recommendations, including a different welfare system for young people, changes to how they receive benefits and to education, and rethinking how disability assessments such as PIP are carried out. Shrimsley says these changes are front-loaded and would cost billions upfront, with the aim of cutting the long-term welfare bill. He calls the reasoning entirely sensible and politically wise, since Labour MPs want to do this the right way rather than simply for cuts. But it adds to the money demanded of Chancellor John Healey, who also has to find money for defence, so he says he will sell Healey.

Lucy Fisher says she will sell Dan Jarvis, because at the conference he was repeatedly referred to as Jarvis and people did not even know his first name. She reports that the B Ready campaign, the UK government communications campaign telling people to buy water and stock up on torches and radios, was supposed to be rolled out by Dan Jarvis, from the Cabinet Office, quietly and softly to avoid panic. She says Wes Streeting took it from under his feet by giving it as an answer to a question at a recent press conference rather than as an announcement, so Jarvis was, in her words, completely played by Streeting.

The episode ends with light remarks about the preparedness advice. Clover says you need a large house to store the water, and Shrimsley jokes that he has six barrels in the corridor near his front door, which his toddler uses as an assault course. Fisher closes by saying the next week's episode will return to the studio and that a longer interview with defence secretary Wes Streeting is available in the show notes.