The Royal Navy’s rapid expansion in the 1700s was not merely the result of a clamor for a larger fleet; it was an intrinsic driver of the domestic economy. Expansion was born from a pressing need to protect British commercial interests, and more pertinently to push and safeguard British goods, services, and most eminently, the British Empire and transatlantic slavery around the globe. These assets required fierce defense from larger, often more powerful colonial rivals who watched on with a longing hunger for global hegemony.
What we see here is that the number one agenda item of the state was driving exports and aggressively protecting them. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in 1694 as the English state was enduring bruising naval campaigns against France during the Nine Years' War and presiding over some of its worst maritime setbacks in fifty years the Bank of England was founded specifically to raise £1.2 million to fund a vital new naval reconstruction program (Gordon, 2024). It marked a definitive turning point in British and world history. For the first time, a state-backed initiative was tasked with selling equities in the Bank of England, promising a government-secured return of 8% (Bank of England, 2020) that was primarily funded by the wealthiest members of society.
The establishment of the Bank enabled the government to fund the structural changes needed to scale the Royal Navy’s size. In direct coordination, this fueled the British economic engine, ensuring continued returns for a growing empire. This prudent link between a collective, precision-targeted wealth accumulation effort and national security is laid bare in the historical data. In 1740, just over forty years after the Bank of England was formed, the number of ships in the Royal Navy had fully recovered from past defeats, surpassing 190 vessels and exceeding the fleets of its main rivals by a factor of two.
This point is further magnified by the conclusion of the Seven Years' War; by 1760, the fleet had swelled to over 370 ships just over double the size of its main rival, France (Statista, 2024). The core point is clear: this combined action by the state produced a system that could effectively levy money from all sectors of society based on collective capital investment. Though these gains were realized to varying economic degrees, the 8% returns corralled the poorest in society to pay into a system that could grow their wealth, while incentivizing the richest to invest in a strong Royal Navy to preserve and protect their fortunes that were flowing through global sea lanes.
While this outcome was heavily skewed toward a specific wealthy percentile of the economy, the underlying practice demonstrates a timeless truth: the state must take seriously the link between collective societal wealth and the raising of funds from differing sources to ensure the protection and prosperity of the United Kingdom. What, then, can we deduce from this historical example when examining the economy of the United Kingdom today?
The modern UK undoubtedly finds itself isolated in a fractured world filled with increasingly powerful adversaries, yet it currently lacks a dependent economic and diplomatic plan to restore its standing in the near future. With distinct and crass irony, Britain once again finds itself in a predicament over how to fund the future of its defense. While the halls, chambers, and classrooms of Whitehall and elite British universities clamor, discuss, and demand more defense expenditure, a broken exchequer is left scratching its head in agony simultaneously paralyzed and unable to protect the long-term interests of the state. If that loop sounds all too familiar, it is because the exact same paralysis occurred in the late 17th century.
The Modern British state, now more than ever, needs to realize that the writing on the wall is clear: raise the funds, or suffer the consequences. Yet, while the solution at the time was to provide a debt fund for merchants, elites, and the wider populace to pay into, expanding the national debt today is neither a novel nor a viable idea. What must be executed instead is the direct taxation of wealth and assets. With a billionaire class of just 157 individuals currently holding more than a fifth of the country’s entire GDP (Hill, 2026) which, for context, stood at £3.037 trillion total in 2025 (Harari, 2026).This select group holds roughly £607.4 billion in untapped wealth.
Alongside this is the millionaire class numbering 3,061,553 individuals residing in the United Kingdom (UBS, 2024) a hyper-concentration mirrored by official domestic data showing that the top 10% of British households now hold a net worth of £1,200,500 or more, while the least wealthy 10% had £16,500 or less.”(Office for National Statistics, 2025). Based on this argument of taxation we can build a clear picture to see how this would impact UK defence and Welfare into the future. By just implementing a flat 2% annual tax on the total £9 trillion fortune held by the nation’s three million millionaires, combined with a 4% annual tax on the total £607.4 billion asset pool of its 157 billionaires, the state instantly generates a staggering £204.3 billion in extra revenue for the British Exchequer every single year.
To amplify further the negligible effect this would have on the wealthy elite, out of their collective £9.607 trillion fortune, the United Kingdom’s financial elite would still keep a tidy £9.403 trillion fortune. To highlight the immense material significance of this revenue: on 2 July 2017, the Ministry of Defence announced the award of a contract valued at £3.7 billion to manufacture the first batch of three Type 26 Frigates (UK Parliament, 2025), totalling roughly £1.2 billion per ship.
This is a formidable warship, matching the multi-role presence of the classic cruisers of old. With just a single year of this proposed wealth tax, the Ministry of Defence assuming all revenues were ring-fenced for naval procurement, could build 170 of these elite warships in a single year. Within just five years, the country could commission an astonishing 851 new hulls.
The strategic dividend multiplies even further when factoring in the far-reaching economic benefits, domestic manufacturing jobs, and specialized skills learned through the creation of new ports and maritime infrastructure and equipment. While this analysis is heavily focused on the Royal Navy due to our opening salvo, the truth applies universally across all branches of the British Military and wider society and nothing is stopping us from achieving it. There is no structural reason why, within five years, this country cannot once again command a truly world-class military.
To the defence chiefs of the United Kingdom, the issue of funding seems to be the greatest and most immovable object to the construction of a larger and more robust defence plan. But demanding more funding without demanding a change in the way we finance it is not going to work. This article highlights that it is practically possible to levy this money to ensure that the United Kingdom can remain protected while simultaneously providing capital to welfare and other government services. However the good news is that this type of economic defence is not just an isolated incident and Britain can be a model for European defence and a model to its European allies well into the future.
Building an economy first approach towards defence, that prioritises the fair taxation of the elite and a change of society for the whole population, through expanded government services, ultimately will ensure that defence in Britain will have the resources it needs to procure a world class military and the ‘claut’ to present to the state's population that it protects and provides for it, in turn potentially leading to a boost in recruitment statistics.
The United Kingdom really could set an example for the rest of the world and pave the way for better, larger and far more integrated defence on the currently uneasy European continent.