Five ways Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed UK government

While the conflict between Russia and Ukraine had been ongoing since the occupation of Crimea and combat in the Donbas from 2014, it was Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 that drew heightened condemnation and extensive political and economic sanctions from the UK, US, EU and aligned nations. But while by far the most significant consequences of the invasion over the past year have clearly been for the people of the Ukraine (and Russia), the advent of war in mainland Europe has also had consequences for UK government.  

Although there has been a high degree of cross-party consensus around the UK’s stalwart support for the people of Ukraine, the effects of the war – on domestic policy priorities, government spending and the UK’s international relations – have shifted political priorities and debates, with knock on impacts for the framing of other long-term policy questions including net zero and immigration. Meanwhile, the costs of the war – both in terms of direct military aid and the effect of the conflict on energy prices and associated inflation – have appreciably narrowed the finance and economic choices available to the UK’s politicians as they shape their priorities ahead of the next general election, expected in 2024.    

Hannah White 

Energy has become the dominant issue in UK politics 

British politicians, like others, had got used to a period of low energy prices and stable supplies. They have now experienced an extraordinary spike in prices (with very high knock-on inflation) – and even warnings of blackouts. Initially slow to grasp the scale of the crisis, the government has since provided unprecedented financial support, taking most of the extra £50–60bn in imported gas costs directly onto its balance sheet. ¹⁸ https://ca1-eci.edcdn.com/Cost-of-Gas-since-Russian-invasion-ECIU-briefing-Feb-23.pdf?v=1676929286 It has also been forced to think harder about the data and systems it needs to support vulnerable households. 

The war has not seen the UK’s net zero objective seriously questioned. Instead it has strengthened political consensus that domestic renewables offer the cheapest and most secure form of energy. The government is likely to face further pressure on its tentative support for onshore wind and solar. Energy efficiency – long a neglected policy area – is also back in vogue, particularly in the Treasury. There is a new target and a new taskforce, though not yet a credible plan for insulating homes.  

The new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is tasked with plotting the UK’s course out of the crisis. Even with prices falling faster than expected, next winter still looks challenging – and energy is likely to remain front and centre of the political agenda well beyond that.  

Tom Sasse 

Homes for Ukraine shows flaws – and opportunities – in the UK’s asylum system 

The Russian invasion displaced Ukrainians who, fleeing the conflict, became refugees in need of accommodation and support. Attention quickly turned to what the UK government would do to help. The Home Office’s initial response was criticised for being slow and bureaucratic, as the department’s overriding instinct to prioritise control, and security won out over pressure to get refugees into safe UK accommodation quickly. The same failure to ‘see the face behind the case’, to take a compassionate approach to service delivery and to balance competing priorities contributed to the Home Office’s failings in the Windrush scandal and lay behind its subsequent transformation programme. 

The Home Office’s flat-footed response contributed to the decision that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities should take lead responsibility for what became ‘Homes for Ukraine’, a community sponsor scheme created in March 2022 that recognised the role local authorities have in supporting refugees once they arrive in the UK. This added weight to the argument ²¹ Mackenzie P, Sanctuary UK: Reforming our broken asylum system, Demos, 21 November 2022, https://demos.co.uk/project/sanctuary-uk-reforming-our-broken-asylum-system/ that asylum would be better co-ordinated through a more systematically cross-government set-up, as has the recent scandal over asylum-seeking children going missing from Home Office-commissioned hotels. 

After its botched start, Homes for Ukraine has been an effective model for accommodating large numbers of refugees (more than 110,000 as of January 2023) while defusing the political tension that characterises other asylum policy. 

There are unresolved problems to address if a community sponsorship model is to be used again. In particular councils need to be able, and have the resources, to support refugees when their temporary placements come to an end – preventing them from becoming homeless, helping them find work and their own accommodation. The diverting of experienced staff from other parts of the Home Office shows the pitfalls of setting up a ‘bespoke’ scheme in response to a crisis. ²² Tomlinson J, ‘Bureaucratic Warfare: Administrative Justice and the Crisis of the “New Bespokism”’, Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, 2022, https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/188010/ Nevertheless, the overall success of Homes for Ukraine does show that larger scale, flexible community sponsorship capacity could form a greater part of UK governments’ longer term approach to asylum. 

Foreign Office resource has been redirected to deal with the crisis  

Prior to Russia's invasion, the Foreign Office had seen a decline in its Russia expertise - despite the government having described the country as "the most acute threat to our security" in the Integrated Review. The muted response to Russia’s invasion of the Crimea in 2014 had already shown that, as a former UK ambassador to Moscow and Washington put it, “there was a problem in the Foreign Office; the old Cold War cadre of people just wasn’t there”. 

More recently, between 2016 and 2022, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia unit was among the smallest of the geographical units in the department (pre- and post-merger). Even after the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) drew attention to Russian language proficiency as a ‘weak spot’ in 2015, the number of advanced Russian speakers in the Foreign Office continued to drop – from 83 in December 2017 to below 60 in February 2022. ²⁷ https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/How-should-the-foreign-office-change-now.pdf  

Since the outbreak of war, the Foreign Office has increased the number of people working on Russia and Ukraine. The then foreign secretary, Liz Truss, wrote to the FAC in March 2022 pointing out the establishment of a “new 24/7 Russia-Ukraine hub” under the leadership of a director general. ²⁸ https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/9412/documents/161198/default/ In July 2022 she wrote to the same committee, detailing the deployment of over 840 staff to work on response to the crisis. ²⁹ https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/28607/documents/172661/default/ Around the same time, it was reported in the media that Truss was asking for 1,000 additional staff to support her department’s activity, notably on Ukraine. ³⁰ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/06/08/liz-truss-defies-boris-johnson-plot-slash-whitehall-jobs/

This shift in approach to resourcing Russia and Ukraine is noticeable, and the UK can consider its response to the war so far a diplomatic success. But while a surge in the number of staff dealing with the region was always going to be necessary after the outbreak of war, the question remains as to why the Foreign Office had a comparatively low number of staff focused on the region prior to Russia’s invasion – and the extent to which that hindered the UK’s response. 

Jordan Urban 

The Treasury must grapple with the end of the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ 

As prime minister Boris Johnson promised to increase defence spending from an existing 2% to 2.5% of GDP; his successor Liz Truss went further by committing to 3%. Rishi Sunak has so far kept his powder dry, relying on the fact that defence budgets have been fixed – front-loaded and relatively generous – until 2025 to punt off the decision until after the next general election. But the Ministry of Defence is notoriously leaky when it comes to spending allocations and will, alongside retired senior officers, ensure that public skirmishes about UK capability and budgets continue. ³² https://news.sky.com/story/us-general-warns-british-army-no-longer-top-level-fighting-force-defence-sources-reveal-12798365 

One risk is that leaks and arguments about the size of the army, military procurement and GDP percentages distract from a serious reckoning on what a new war in Europe means for the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ that has benefited us all. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has profoundly changed the calculus in deciding where to invest and where to cut. That means extremely difficult choices for a Treasury gearing up for retrenchment and conscious that protecting military budgets means cuts would fall even more heavily on public services, themselves in desperate need of more investment. 

Another risk is that Sunak’s can-kicking over budgets postpones the serious investment needed in military supplies. Western materiel and equipment are being depleted at a rapid rate on the battlefields of Ukraine, leading to concerns that neither government nor industry have moved to the war-footing required for resupply. This is of course a problem of money but it is as much one of logistics. Resupply of materiel is an urgent priority. Serious discussion of defence spending, procurement and supply will be a new reality for the government for years to come. 

Alex Thomas 

Britain’s place in the world is clearer – and it is western and European, more than global  

The Ukraine conflict prompted a further revisiting of the 2021 ‘integrated review’ into foreign, security, defence and development policy. In line with the spirit of that pre-Russian invasion period, the original document was titled “Global Britain in a competitive age”. But beyond the Johnsonian rhetoric the 2021 document was quite clear-sighted about UK interests. It pledged to support an “open and resilient international order” but warned that “to be open we must also be secure” and of increasing competition between states and a fragmented international order. To that end the review already committed to exceeding NATO spending commitments, and the UK playing its part in multilateral governance and collective security in a more hard-nosed way. 

The ‘global’ in Britain was reflected in an ambition to more deeply engage in the Indo-Pacific, to adapt to China’s growing power and climate and global health objectives. All reasonable goals, and the UK is right to maintain a global presence, particularly through soft power reach like the BBC, climate leadership, international students spending time in the country, and enviable cyber and intelligence capabilities, as well as to build post-Brexit trade links. 

But we now see more clearly that, in a crisis, for the foreseeable future UK interests are aligned with the US and Europe, especially if China aligns itself more with Russia. Geography and historic alliances trump global ambitions. The revival of NATO’s purpose and a unified western response have been a necessary if painful reminder of where UK interests truly lie. 

Alex Thomas