For the last nine years, the British military has decreased in size with personnel decreasing in the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force (RAF). While the Ministry of Defence maintains that the forces are continually meeting their operational requirements, Lord Alan West has raised serious concerns, stating that cuts may make Britain weaker on the international stage. He told Express.co.uk: “The top priority for any government is the defence and security of our nation, they all parrot this, but they don’t actually put their money where their mouth is.
“I think everyone will accept that the world is more chaotic and dangerous today than it has been since the Fifties. The way you make yourself secure and prevent wars, is having hard power but we have let that slowly whittle away.
“Therefore we aren’t able to ensure stability, and someone like Putin who understands hard power, sees this purely as a weakness and he does this risky business of pushing and prodding, I don’t think he wants a war but it could happen by mistake because we are not strong enough.
“The lack of hard power makes people who are autocrats think ‘oh well, they aren’t really serious’ so they push, and the danger then is they will then do something that tips things over the edge, and suddenly you’ve got a war even though nobody wants it.”
In 2018 there was a £20billion shortfall in the UK’s £179billion equipment budget, and figures in August showed that the British forces were 7,000 soldiers short of its 82,000 target.
Just this week Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to come out and deny claims that the British forces would cut its personnel to between 60,000-65,000, the smallest number for centuries.
Mr Johnson said while launching his 2019 manifesto: “We will not be cutting our armed forces in any form. We will be maintaining the size of our armed services.”
But Lord West, who serves as a Labour peer in the House of Lords, also has reservations about the Conservative Party’s defence pledges, stating that the Tory stance on defence consisted of “a lot of rhetoric” and “not much action”.
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He added: “They [Conservatives] want to keep their heads below the parapet, defence is the last thing the Government wants to be a big issue to be debated in this election. It’s not a vote winner, it’s only a vote winner when suddenly there is a war and we are about to be defeated.
“The Tories don’t seem to acknowledge that there have been reductions to defence that are considerably more than there have been in any other area, and these have been going on for some years.
“Therefore there is not enough money. The actual reality is that we need more than the 0.5 percent increase.”
The Tories have vowed to exceed the NATO target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence and increase the budget by at least 0.5 percent above inflation every year.
Lord West served in Britain’s Navy between 1965 and 2005, and was involved in the Falklands and Iraq conflicts.
He also expressed concern regarding Jeremy Corbyn due to his previous opposition to Trident, as well as his previous associations with Hamas militants.
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He said: “It seems his default position is to side with terrorists, with people like Hamas and Hezbollah, rather than side with our own agencies and military. That is historically what he has done.
“I have severe doubts about Jeremy Corbyn because clearly he doesn’t agree with the Trident nuclear deterrent, and I believe he is a unilateralist and that is extremely worrying.
“To be fair, the manifesto says they will keep Trident, but that’s because the unions have forced him to hold back from unilateralism.”
A Labour Party spokesperson told Express.co.uk: “Jeremy Corbyn will do whatever is necessary and effective to keep the British people safe.
“He has consistently made the right calls in the interests of peace and security at home and abroad.
“In government, Labour will spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defence and expand our commitment to peacekeeping around the world.”
A Conservative Party spokesperson added: “Thanks to the Conservatives, the UK is one of the only NATO members to meet the target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence. And we announced an additional £2.2 billion for defence in the Spending Round.
“The real threat to our national defences would be a Corbyn government propped up by Nicola Sturgeon, with abandoning Trident and the chaos of another two referendums the price for SNP support.”