Admiral Lord West says defence chiefs were unprepared for Brexit. Source: Louise Haywood-Schiefer
Panicked defence chiefs have been blocked from making proper plans to deal with Britain’s exit from the European Union, according to Admiral Lord West, a member of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy.
A Brexit scenario was not seriously considered by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), claimed the former First Sea Lord. "Everyone has been running around like headless chickens," he said.
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"I am shocked that the MoD didn't have a plan of action, the MoD and the agencies and everyone else, for Brexit," Lord West added.
"Instead of them saying 'right the worst has happened, this is now what we do', they didn't have a clue what they were going to do. They had no Plan B. The military always has a Plan B. They also have a Plan C. That's what we're good at."
Speaking to CSW's sister title, The House magazine, Lord West – a security minister in the last Labour government – added: "But I don't think they'd been allowed to do that. That had not been allowed to happen because of politicians and civil servants. That is very worrying. So we now need to move very quickly to make sure we do have a plan."
In his view, Britain needs to make up for lost time and reassure its allies that it remains committed to Nato and Europe.
"We've got to really move quickly and ensure we do the right things to stay as engaged as possible with our European friends."
His concerns over the government being caught out by Brexit were echoed by Whitehall expert Lord Peter Hennessey.
"We're faced with this resetting of the dial on every conceivable front, to a degree without precedent in peacetime. And we're not ready,” he told CSW.
The latest Strategic Defence and Security Review, which was done in 2015, was “absolutely silent on leaving the EU, and also the leaving of the EU triggering the breakup of the union,” Lord Hennessey said.
“All the rest of the world is taken care of beautifully, but the huge dramatic change in our strategic position in the world which this represents – which will be even greater when Scotland separates – means that by 2025 we will be an utterly different country in terms of our place in the world,” he added.
Concerns over the government’s failure to properly plan for Brexit have been mounting in recent weeks.
Leaving the EU would mean having to come up with a new defence strategy, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warned before the referendum vote last month.
Brexit would represent “as significant a shift in national strategy as the country’s decision in the late 1960s to withdraw from bases East of Suez,” argued Professor Malcolm Chalmers, RUSI's deputy director-general and a former special adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.