National security isn’t a macho contest
The UK defence secretary, John Healey, has announced £2.5 million in funding for a new welding facility on the Clyde, framing it as proof that Labour ‘backs Scottish industry’ while accusing the SNP of being soft on national security. The Scottish Government, for its part, has defended its refusal to fund projects directly linked to munitions, pointing to a long track record of investment in defence-related industries excluding arms production.
The spat is a familiar one: politicians lining up to claim they are tougher than their opponents on defence. It is a kind of political machismo that reduces security to a contest over who is more willing to pour money into military projects. Yet this is not national security in any meaningful sense.
The reality is that Scotland – and the UK as a whole – faces a wide spectrum of security challenges, many of which cannot be addressed by more ships, more submarines, or more missiles. Climate change is one of the most significant security threats of our age, with rising seas, extreme weather, and resource pressures already destabilising regions across the globe. The COVID pandemic showed us how vulnerable we are to global health crises, and how much stronger our societies need to be to withstand them. Energy insecurity, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, organised crime, and the erosion of social cohesion are all security challenges that can’t be solved by aircraft carriers.
Framing national security purely as a matter of military spending leads to distorted priorities. For every pound committed to shipbuilding or weapons systems, there is one less to strengthen resilience in health, education, critical infrastructure, or community support. And yet these are the very areas that actually keep people safe in daily life.
There is also a deeper problem with the way ‘defence jobs’ are politicised. To hear Labour or Conservatives speak, you would think the only way to secure skilled, well-paid employment is to tie Scottish workers to the arms industry. But this is a false choice. The same skills used in welding and shipbuilding can and should be redeployed to build the infrastructure we urgently need for a secure, sustainable future: renewable energy systems, resilient housing, and modern transport. A real security strategy would put these priorities first.
Scotland has a proud shipbuilding tradition, and no one is suggesting that it should be abandoned. But to say that our prosperity and our security can only be guaranteed by even more military contracts is to shrink our ambition and narrow our options. A more responsible politics would recognise that ‘security’ is not synonymous with ‘defence spending’ and that the industries we build now should be designed to protect us against the actual threats we face.
The macho contest over who is harder on defence is theatre, not strategy. It reduces national security to a set of soundbites delivered at party conferences, while the serious work of building a resilient, secure society is left undone. If we are serious about protecting our communities, we need to stop measuring toughness in terms of weapons ordered and start measuring it in terms of lives made safer, healthier, and more stable.
That means investing in public health, climate resilience, energy independence, and the digital defences that underpin the modern economy. It means putting workers’ skills to use in industries that deliver long-term security rather than lock us into cycles of arms production. And it means recognising that the ultimate test of security is not how loudly politicians boast about their toughness on a conference stage – it’s about making sure ordinary people are safe in their homes, their work, and their future.
