Yesterday’s announcement of a £15 billion increase in UK defence investment reflects a growing political consensus that Britain faces a more uncertain and dangerous international environment. Questions about military readiness, national resilience and defence spending are understandably moving to the centre of political debate.
In recent weeks, Kemi Badenoch and others on the right to position welfare spending and defence spending as competing priorities. The argument is simple and politically convenient: if Britain wants to spend more on defence, it must spend less on welfare. The claim is straightforward and politically attractive. If governments have limited resources and defence must become a higher priority, then social security should bear the cost.
But this presents Britain with a false choice, and one the Government has seemingly not accepted.
During yesterday’s announcement, the Prime Minister, explicitly recognised that national strength cannot be built simply by cutting the institutions and services that support society. A country does not become stronger by increasing military spending while allowing poverty, insecurity and social division to deepen. As Starmer stated in his speech:
Slash funding to our public services in favour of defence – and we would be fundamentally weaker as a nation – more fractured as a society, less able to defend ourselves when our enemies prey on social division.
The next Labour leader should therefore resist attempts to pit defence against welfare. Rather than accepting the premise that social spending and national security compete with one another, they should challenge it directly. The real question is not whether Britain chooses defence or welfare, but whether we understand security broadly enough to recognise that both matter.
A nation is not made secure simply because it possesses a stronger military. Security also depends on whether people can afford food, housing and energy. It depends on whether children can develop their talents. It depends on whether people are healthy enough to work, learn and participate in their communities. It depends on social cohesion, civic trust and confidence in public institutions.
A country weakened by growing poverty is not a stronger country. It is a more vulnerable one.
For too long, poverty policy has increasingly been discussed through the language of costs, constraints and burdens. Politicians frequently ask what welfare spending costs taxpayers, but spend far less time asking what poverty costs society.
Yet the costs of poverty are substantial. Poverty damages educational outcomes, constrains skills development, increases pressure on health services and contributes to poorer physical and mental health. It can increase social isolation, weaken community ties and generate greater demands on public services. When poverty rises, the state rarely spends less; it simply spends more dealing with the consequences rather than addressing the causes.
This is why the next Labour leader must do more than defend welfare spending. They must articulate a positive vision of social investment.
The evidence from across advanced economies points to an important lesson: countries that invest in people often generate stronger economic outcomes over the long term. This should not be surprising. When individuals have sufficient security to pursue education, develop skills, maintain good health and participate fully in society, productivity rises. Human potential is unlocked rather than constrained.
The relationship between tackling poverty and economic growth is not oppositional. In many respects, they are mutually reinforcing.
This is a lesson that older social democratic and Keynesian traditions understood well. Welfare is not simply a mechanism for responding to hardship after it occurs. At its best, it is preventative. It creates the conditions in which people can flourish and contribute.
Put simply, spending money reducing poverty today can save money tomorrow.
But there is also a deeper political challenge here. The attempt to pit defence against welfare is part of a broader effort to redefine what constitutes productive public spending. Expenditure on military capacity is increasingly characterised as investment, while expenditure on poverty reduction is characterised as consumption. One is presented as contributing to national strength; the other as detracting from it.
The next Labour leader should turn this argument on its head.
What could be more important to national strength than ensuring children enter school ready to learn? What could be more important than enabling workers to retrain for changing labour markets? What could be more important than preventing ill health, homelessness and social exclusion from undermining people’s ability to participate economically and socially?
A serious anti-poverty strategy is not a distraction from national renewal. It is a precondition for it.
Indeed, Labour’s challenge is not merely to defend existing welfare arrangements but to develop a more ambitious agenda for reducing poverty. That means moving beyond crisis management and thinking seriously about long-term social investment. It means strengthening income security, improving access to quality education and skills, addressing housing affordability, and creating pathways into secure and meaningful employment.
Most importantly, it means changing the story we tell about poverty.
The public debate has become too comfortable with the idea that spending on poverty is a luxury that can only be afforded once other priorities have been met. The next Labour leader must make the case that the opposite is true.
Poverty reduction is not a competing demand on public resources. It is an investment in human capability, economic performance and social cohesion. It creates healthier citizens, stronger communities and more productive economies. It reduces future costs while expanding future opportunities.
The language of ‘defence versus welfare’ presents Britain with a false choice. The next Labour leader should have the confidence to say so.
Because ultimately the strongest nation is not the one that chooses military security over social security. It is the one that recognises both are essential – and that tackling poverty is itself an act of national strengthening.
Lee Gregory is Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Nottingham.
Read all the articles in the Academics Stand Against Poverty blog series here.
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Image credit: Reaper UAV Takes to the Skies of Southern Afghanistan reuse under OGL
