Andy Burnham provided one of those rare moments at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday when a politician inadvertently crystallises an entire political philosophy in a single sentence. Challenged over defence spending, the UK prime minister declared: ‘We will do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.’ You could almost hear an elderly Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament badge rattling approvingly in a drawer somewhere.

It was the old left slogan, ‘welfare not warfare’, reheated for the TikTok generation. Why bother with tanks when you can have tax credits? Who needs Trident when you’ve got Universal Credit? The immediate objection is obvious. At a time of Russian aggression, geopolitical instability and growing doubts about Britain’s military preparedness, a government’s first responsibility must surely be the defence of the realm. Vladimir Putin is unlikely to abandon his territorial ambitions after discovering that Britain has increased housing benefit.

But there is another problem with Burnham’s distinction between social and national security: the two are increasingly intertwined.

Britain’s welfare state was established principally as a system of national solidarity. Working-age citizens contributed to state resources from which they and their fellow Brits could draw support during unemployment, sickness and old age. Yet the contemporary welfare state increasingly strains against that principle: if anyone from anywhere can access it, it is no longer connected to the national community.

Consider asylum. Government figures show that in June 2025, some 106,000 asylum seekers were receiving state support, with 103,000 provided with accommodation. Remarkably, the government’s own asylum policy acknowledges that accommodation should be ‘decent and humane without becoming a pull factor’. That admission matters. It shows that even ministers recognise that welfare provision can be an incentive for illegal immigration.

It certainly cuts against the mainstream media narrative. We are frequently invited to believe that migrants navigate thousands of miles across continents, contact smugglers and ultimately reach Calais, yet remain mysteriously oblivious to the conditions awaiting them once they arrive. But research shows that many asylum seekers do take conditions and welfare policies into account.

One of these conditions is healthcare. In England, anyone can register with a GP and receive primary medical care without charge. NHS guidance explicitly states that GP practices do not require proof of identity, address or immigration status. That applies even to somebody without lawful immigration status. Campaigns for so-called Safe Surgeries have sought to ensure that migrants can obtain primary healthcare without immigration status becoming a barrier.

Politically, it illustrates something important. The border increasingly ceases to affect access to certain institutions of the British state. Someone can have no legal entitlement to remain in Britain while simultaneously possessing an entitlement to use its healthcare system. For primary care at least, the N in NHS seems remarkably negotiable.

Housing creates similar pressures. Britain already has a chronic shortage of affordable homes, with lengthy waiting lists in many parts of the country. Yet once migrants acquire an eligible immigration status, they can enter the social-housing system. In London, 48 per cent of social housing is occupied by a head of household who wasn’t born in the UK. We frequently read cases of asylum seekers being moved into newly built homes.

Immigration policy therefore cannot sensibly be considered separately from housing, healthcare and welfare capacity. Every additional entitlement creates demands on resources that are already scarce.

Oddly enough, Labour governments understand incentives perfectly well when trying to make us stop smoking, or encouraging us to buy electric cars and install heat pumps. But suggest that incentives might also influence migration, however, and the concept suddenly becomes bafflingly controversial.

The result is a state speaking out of both sides of its mouth. At the Channel, it insists that illegal entry is unacceptable. But once someone has crossed the border, humanitarian and universalist principles increasingly require that important services be provided regardless of how the entrant arrived. The message is essentially: NO ENTRY – but if you do get in (and we won’t stop you), there are clean towels upstairs.

And therein lies the problem. A border is more than a line on a map: it is supposed to determine who may enter, who may remain, and, ultimately, who belongs to the political community. If crossing it unlawfully has diminishing consequences for access to the institutions of the state, the border itself risks becoming little more than a paper barrier.

All this brings us back to Burnham’s false distinction between social and national security. National security isn’t simply aircraft carriers, missiles and NATO spending. It begins closer to home, with maintaining territorial integrity through enforceable borders.

That is why social security cannot simply be set against national security. A fully functioning welfare state depends upon national security. It depends on protecting a political community, demarcated by real borders. Once those borders become porous, welfare provision risks becoming another incentive to cross them, while the distinction between citizen and non-citizen becomes progressively less meaningful.

Andy Burnham can talk all he likes about putting social security before national security. But a state that cannot secure its borders cannot secure its welfare state either.