Le ministère de la Défense intensifie apparemment the tests of battlefield electronic vehicles (EV). The Secretary of Defense, John Healey, hailed this initiative as a way “to improve the […] environmental performance of military vehicles.” If Great Britain is to wage a war, the current Labour government seems determined to do so without releasing too much carbon into the atmosphere.

The resistance from military officers has been intense. The former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, called it “virtue signaling.” Admiral Lord West stated that this endeavor gave him a “horrible feeling.” Meanwhile, Colonel Tim Collins, who commanded the Royal Irish in Iraq, asked: “What is driving this? Is it a necessity on the battlefield or a fad?” There is no doubt, obviously, that this is another example of boutique political and cultural issues overshadowing any desire for competence in British institutions.

But it goes further than that. The reality is that the Labour government is determined to cede the remaining limited resources in the British military budget to friendly contractors. Magtec, a defense company specializing in vehicle electrification, has secured £400,000 in contracts since July. While this is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall size of the military budget, it is yet another indication that the British government has long ceased to focus on deploying a serious army. Instead, it has reverted to a mere ideological display.

When the Houthis began harassing ships in the Red Sea a year ago, Great Britain controversially refused to send an aircraft carrier to the region, instead preferring bombing campaigns conducted from a RAF base in Cyprus. Reports at the time indicated a personnel crisis that meant the Royal Navy could only deploy a support ship. A few weeks after Great Britain refused to engage with its aircraft carrier, it turned out that HMS Queen Elizabeth was unable to participate in NATO exercises due to problems with its propeller.

The problems are not limited to British aircraft carriers either. In February of this year, the Royal Navy attempted to launch a missile from its Trident submarine. This failed for the second consecutive time and the missile crashed into the sea. The Ministry of Defense insisted that the British nuclear deterrent “remains safe, secure, and effective,” but it is unclear how it could assess this after two consecutive failed tests. The reality is that the Trident nuclear deterrent has not been successfully tested in a decade.

This should be of particular concern after the long campaign by Keir Starmer to allow Ukraine to fire long-range missiles at Russia, which resulted in Moscow launching its new Oreshnik missile at a target in Dnipro. The missile arrived from its launch site in Astrakhan a few minutes after being fired and likely surprised those operating NATO’s early warning radar systems. If this had been a nuclear strike, would Trident have been able to launch all its munitions? No one can say for sure.

The movement of this government to adopt manifestly absurd ideas such as Net Zero in the military is hardly surprising. Tackling the deep crisis in British military institutions is a daunting task, and no government has yet had the courage to address the issue. What we get instead are virtue signaling movements that seem almost designed to distract from the worsening problems. If the Ministry of Defense can check a few boxes on diversity goals or on Net Zero, it can only hope that no one will start asking uncomfortable questions about aircraft carriers or Trident submarines.

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Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional, and the author of The Reformation in Economics

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