ANDREW NEIL: Their studied indifference to the proper defence of the nation make Starmer and Reeves unfit to govern
SOURCE:Daily Mail
We are witnessing the betrayal of a nation, writes ANDREW NEIL. It is being facilitated, at least in part, by a political and media elite which knows little about military matters - and cares even less.
The abject failure of the Labour government to increase defence spending by anything like enough at a time of great and growing national peril is the political scandal of our age.
We are witnessing the betrayal of a nation. It is being facilitated, at least in part, by a political and media elite which knows little about military matters – and cares even less.
Keir Starmer boasts misleadingly about presiding over the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War. His Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prattles on about how she’s turning Britain into a ‘defence industry superpower’, a claim as absurd as it is hypocritical, given how she is consciously starving defence of the extra funds it needs.
Both regularly spout this nonsense just to get them through the latest broadcast interview, usually while being questioned by interviewers who lack even a basic knowledge of defence to challenge them. So, let’s begin with some facts.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 our defence spending as a share of GDP was the third highest in Nato (after America and Greece, whose defence budget is boosted by its fear of Turkey). It wasn’t nearly enough but it was above the Nato average.
In the four years since then, during which the world has become a vastly more dangerous place, we’ve slumped to 12th highest, behind not just Poland and the Baltic States (on the frontline of a revanchist Russia) but even little Denmark and peace-loving Sweden. That is the true measure of the Starmer-Reeves commitment to the defence of our nation.
Last year, as they were bunging billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands (a fool’s policy if ever there was one), spending billions more on welfare to appease Labour’s soft-Left backbenches and doling out all manner of massive pay rises to their core voters in the public sector, Starmer-Reeves couldn’t even manage 2.5 per cent of our GDP on defence, despite America’s commitment to Nato growing ever more tenuous and Russia’s threats ever more serious.
Keir Starmer boasts misleadingly about presiding over the biggest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, writes Andrew Neil
Starmer was right on taking office to say our military was in a pretty dreadful state. The problem is he’s doing precious little about it
Let’s delve a little deeper into Labour spending on the military. In the summer of 2024 Starmer-Reeves inherited a £60billion defence budget from the Tories for the financial year 2024-25. There was no increase – just another £60billion in real terms (after allowing for inflation) – in 2025-26, Labour’s first full financial year in power.
A real-terms rise of under £3billion is planned for 2026-27 and another £4billion in the year after that. Yet by the end of the decade defence spending is projected to be only £69billion – so a real rise of only 15 per cent over five Labour years. This would be barely enough in normal times. Given the scale of the global threats to our security and the sad state of our military it is wholly inadequate.
The picture is even worse than the headline spending figures suggest. The recent pay rises for the military were much needed and deserved. But they were unfunded and have to come out of the existing budget.
Labour has also folded in the £4billion in military help for Ukraine, making it part of the defence core budget. It also now includes the budget for our intelligence services which Nato rules say can only be done if these services are under military command and are militarily trained. (Ours are neither).
Take all that into account and there is precious little money left for properly enhancing our existing military resources never mind adding to them, which is desperately needed.
Hence you have the makings of a national scandal.
Of course the shortfall in defence spending did not start with the Starmer government. Previous Tory governments are responsible for the hollowing out of our military. In the first half of the 2010s, the Cameron-Osborne government squeezed defence spending hard. They needed to get the national debt and budget deficits under control and thought there was still a post-Cold War peace dividend to harvest in the form of lower military spending.
The Tories continued with this complacent mindset even after President Putin annexed Crimea in 2014. The shameful starvation of our military continued. By the start of this decade the Tories had at least partly seen the light, especially under Ben Wallace, probably the best defence secretary of recent times. Defence spending (in 2024-25 prices) rose from £51billion in 2020 to £60billion in 2024, the Tories’ last year in power – a rise of 18 per cent in four years, which is more than Labour plans in the next five. Even so, Starmer was right on taking office to say our military was in a pretty dreadful state. The problem is he’s doing precious little about it.
Defence spending is rising at a snail’s pace. He talks airily about spending three per cent of GDP on defence by around 2030 and has signed on to a Nato commitment of 3.5 per cent by the mid-2030s.
Our defence spending as a share of GDP has slumped to just the 12th highest in the world, behind not just Poland but even little Denmark and peace-loving Sweden. That is the true measure of the Starmer-Reeves commitment to the defence of our nation
These are fantasy figures. I am assured by sources in Whitehall that there are zero plans to reach that level of spending. It isn’t even being scoped out in the most general terms.
Indeed, there is probably more chance of cuts to our military than increases. The top brass told Starmer and Reeves before Christmas that there was a £28billion shortfall in defence spending between now and 2030 – and that without more money cutbacks would have to begin.
Starmer and Reeves have still to get back to the military on that matter. The PM is bleating that he thought last year’s Security and Defence Review, chaired by George Robertson, former UK defence secretary and Nato Secretary General, was ‘fully costed’. Robertson told me last summer when the SDR was published that Starmer had assured him it would be fully costed. Now it turns out the PM didn’t really know – which speaks volumes for how seriously he takes defence.
It doesn’t stop him from making military commitments for which Britain doesn’t have the men or materiel. This week he agreed with President Macron to send an Anglo-French security force to Ukraine should Russia agree to a peace deal. Among other things, he said, it would act as a ‘deterrent’ to Russia breaking any deal.
Really? The very minimum the UK would need to send to be credible is an armoured brigade of around 5,000. The regular British Army is just over 71,000 strong but only about 25,000 are combat-capable.
Such deployments require regular rotation of troops so we’d struggle to keep even a single brigade in Ukraine and meet our other commitments. Even the current deployment of 1,000 troops in Estonia is proving a bit of a challenge.
I suspect Starmer agreed only because he calculates the Russians have already made it clear they would never accept Nato-country troops on Ukrainian soil. So there will be no peace deal. It is a purely performative gesture. There is nothing in defence spending plans to make it otherwise.
The blunt truth is that the UK’s armed forces – and it pains me to say this as the son of a British Army major (who was a Desert Rat!) – are unprepared for conflict at any scale. It’s not even clear they have the capability to defend the homeland any more.
The Army is the least modernised of our three services. It lacks the scale for serious conflict, its equipment is obsolete and it doesn’t have the ammunition, combat supplies and medical capabilities for high-intensity war beyond the shortest duration.
The last time Labour deployed our troops with inadequate equipment – in Afghanistan, where ‘soft-skin’ Land Rovers were used rather than properly armoured vehicles – it cost young lives.
The Royal Navy isn’t in any better shape. A large percentage of its limited number of ships spends a disproportionate time in the repair yard, including our two new aircraft carriers.
Its Type-23 frigates, designed for 16 years service, are now scheduled to serve for 30-plus years. It has six Type-45 destroyers (of which five were in maintenance in 2024 due to engine failures) but was supposed to have 12. It has seven Astute submarines when it was meant to have 13. Rising costs and various procurement shambles have cut the numbers. The Cameron government delayed the replacement of the Vanguard submarines that carry our Trident nuclear deterrent. So, while we wait for new Dreadnought subs in the next decade, our Tridents are carried on 30-year-old vessels, with only one at sea at any one time, often submerged for 200 days. It’s the barest of deterrents.
Diminished our forces may be but the military remains curiously top heavy. The Army has 200 Generals, which is 25 for each operational brigade. The Navy has 135 Admirals, which works out at more than five for each fighting ship. The RAF has 126 Air Commodores, which is almost as many as its 150 fighter jets.
The Ministry of Defence has just under 60,000 civil servants, which is almost as many as soldiers in the Army – and over three times the number who are combat ready.
The MoD is notorious for squandering billions on procurement of equipment which is nearly always late and hugely over budget. I’ve documented its wasteful ways on these pages before.
Suffice to say this: we often (rightly) hear of the Home Office not being ‘fit for purpose’ – but that is even more true of the MoD. To the extent that – as we desperately need to spend more on defence – it cannot be business as usual.
The MoD needs to be shaken from top to bottom. A new streamlined agency should take over procurement, alert to the new technologies of digital warfare, so apparent on the Ukrainian battlefield. But none of this is reason for delay.
Over the past 18 months the British people have grown wearily used to the incompetence of the Starmer-Reeves government. But their studied indifference to the proper defence of the nation is in a different league.
Even as Britain tried (and failed) to appease the Nazis in the 1930s, UK defence spending rose from two per cent of GDP in 1933 to more than six per cent in 1938. Unless Starmer-Reeves recognise that the current clear and present danger deserves an equivalent response, they should be deemed unfit to govern the nation.