Britain will accelerate a planned increase in military spending to its quickest rate since the Cold War, in response to what its government perceives as a rising threat of war from Russia.
Prime minister Keir Starmer also told the House of Commons on Tuesday that he will help to fund the £13.4 billion (€16.2 billion) increase in annual spending by 2027 through cuts to the UK’s foreign aid budget, drawing criticism from a few of his own MPs.
Mr Starmer’s pledge to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of the value of its economy (GDP) in a little over two years is the first time he has put a timeline on the pledge, which the Tories had promised to do by 2030. Britain spends 2.3 per cent of its GDP on defence at present.
The move was announced by the prime minister before his meeting on Thursday in Washington with US president Donald Trump, who has long demanded that European members of the US-backed Nato military alliance increase their military spending.
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“The historical load we must carry to fulfil our duty is not as light as it once was,” Mr Starmer said. “We must bend our backs across this House because these times demand a united Britain, and we must deploy all of our resources to achieve security.”
There was a weighty mood in the Commons chamber as the prime minister announced the news, which was welcomed by Mr Starmer’s opposite number, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.
She asked if he also planned to raise taxes or borrow more to fund Britain’s extra military spending, to which the prime minister replied: “No.” Paying for military expansion, seen as necessary following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has been a conundrum for the UK, where the economy has flatlined and national debt is near historical highs.
Mr Starmer said cutting the amount of aid Britain provides to developing nations to fund the rise in defence spending was “not a decision I wanted or am happy to make”.
Sarah Champion, a Labour MP who chairs the House of Commons international development committee, criticised the cut in aid budgets as a “false economy” that would make Britain less safe by perpetuating instability in developing regions abroad.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ms Badenoch had called on the UK government to cut the aid budget to fund military spending, in what the Tories billed as a landmark speech by their leader at the offices of right-wing think tank Policy Exchange.
The room upstairs in the building on Old Queen Street, just across from the Houses of Parliament, was packed beyond its comfortable capacity for her speech. She urged the Labour government to adopt an approach of “realism” in international affairs, focused more on its national interest, while maintaining its Nato membership as a bedrock and remaining close to the US.
“We have lived off the inheritance of [Margaret] Thatcher, [Ronald] Reagan and [Mikhail] Gorbachev for too long,” Ms Badenoch said as across the packed room Tory supporters swooned, not at her words but at the stifling heat and heavy air in the undersized room.
Among those for whom there was standing room only was Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary and a potential future leadership contender should Ms Badenoch be ditched before the next election as some in Westminster believe is a possibility.
Meanwhile, the Tory leader remained determined to keep herself centre stage. In response to a question from GB News about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, Ms Badenoch even scolded the journalist, saying he had already asked her the same thing “the last time you were on my show”.
For the rest of this week, however, it is the Starmer-Trump show, with defence at the heart of it.
