John Redwood: Labour weakened our national security long before the Iran war

Lord Redwood is former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales.

The government has spent its first one year eight months undermining our national security, just in time for a war.

This government of international lawyers, by international lawyers for international lawyers has used its own skewed and incompetent interpretations of human rights, net zero, post-colonial settlements and other international treaties to sell us out and weaken our security. When in doubt they argue the foreigner’s corner.

It has gone for the most extreme version of net zero policy. This makes us more energy dependent on Europe. The high energy prices it induces are leading to  closures of refineries, petrochemical works, fertiliser production, steel blast  furnaces,  and many other energy intensive plants. Our own  oil has to languish in the ground whilst  we pay more for imports that come in on diesel  tankers.  The agricultural policy  makes us ever  more dependent on imported food.

If the government knew our history, they would know that we have always been invaded by continental European enemies .  The Romans from Italy succeeded in 55 BC, the Nordic Vikings in the post Roman occupation,  the French Normans in 1066 and the Netherlands in 1688. The Germans failed twice in the twentieth century, The French failed around 1800, the Spanish failed in 1588.

Our defences have relied on a strong navy and more recently on sea  power buttressed by air power.  The country suffered badly in the two world wars of the last century from submarine attacks on shipping making it difficult to supply food and munitions from abroad. Dig for victory, home shipyards, UK chemicals for explosives and home produced steel for weapons were all crucial to survival. At peak production in 1943 the UK made 26,000 warplanes  in UK factories. We couldn’t make 24 today.

This government is so keen on reducing UK CO 2 output it overlooks the fact that most of its food, energy  and industrial policies increase world CO 2 by making us more import dependent. After years in the Common Agricultural policy which drove  down our home produced food, they  are now giving grant and permits  to wild our farms or get them to move  to solar  panels.  Apparently, we need to shift farms out of farming or tax them to close them down. We currently rely heavily on imports  for steel, chemicals and  weapons.

Who would supply those if our seas were prey to the enemy or if our European suppliers were occupied? We would not be able to outlive a submarine blockade of our trade.

Over the last week against the background of evidence of the evil intent of Iran and its allies, the government has moved to give away powers over Gibraltar and to pay money to Spain on top of the give aways. Gibraltar is our crucial air and naval base in the western Mediterranean where EU/Spanish officials will now have powers over who can enter British territory. The EU will impose laws on Gibraltar. Why do that? Spain has always been out to make life difficult for the UK and wants to take Gibraltar over completely. Spain did not help the UK over the violent illegal seizure of the Falklands and disagrees with US/UK action in the Middle East.

The message of past conflicts is twofold. The UK needs to be able to fight alone, as in 1940. The UK needs to produce enough food at home to feed its people, and to produce enough weapons and materials at home to sustain the fighting.

The wish to give Chagos away with a dowry to an ally of China is madness. Mauritius is a non-nuclear country who will take the freehold of this crucial UK/US base with its nuclear facilities. Mauritius may licence Chinese vessels to fish and eavesdrop in adjacent waters.

The wish to tie more of our weapons procurement into pan European collaboration weakens us gravely. You can only rely on weapons you can make for yourself to designs you control from raw materials you produce.

How can you be an important power with no basic steel industry?  How can you fight a war if you need imported explosives and computer chips? How can you project your power abroad to protect your trade routes and sea lanes if you have lost full control of your main foreign bases?

The UK National Security Council led by the PM is making us ever more dependent on imports. It would take just a few cut submarine cables to plunge parts of UK into power cuts. It would be impossible to expand our fleet and airwing quickly using UK industry. We would not be able to feed ourselves if we suffered a blockade. This is a dangerous world. The UK needs to be better defended. The  UK needs to be more self-reliant. Government needs to reverse its net zero bans, get our fish back, support more food growing, commission more capacity to build ships and weapons, ensure  we have good drone, missile and cyber technology and secure the  intellectual property it needs to back the military.

The recent shocking Ministerial failure to get a single destroyer or aircraft carrier to The Med should force a big re think. We need a UK Iron Dome, we need more naval ships and planes and we need much better value for our tax money.