MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The PM is big on bravado but his troops plan won't deter Putin's aggression
Prime Minister Keir Starmer can't be trusted to pursue such a policy. He flails cluelessly when confronted with military issues, mixing bravado with unrealistic expectations.
Published: 01:16 GMT, 11 January 2026 | Updated: 01:48 GMT, 11 January 2026
At the pinnacle of its military power, the US is an enviable nation. Its President merely needs to speak the word and its Islamist enemies are vaporised in moments by drones thousands of miles away.
Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium are buried for ever under millions of tons of rock. The dictator of Caracas is snatched away in the small hours and deposited in an American prison before he realises what has hit him.
Who knows what may be next, now that America has a President who is not inhibited about using the extraordinary weapons which he controls, and the superbly trained people who operate them?
This envy is especially strong in Britain. Many of us look on and wish we could do the same.
But we also worry that we may be called upon to get involved in major conflicts, when we are not truly capable, as happened most notably in Iraq in 2003.
We too were once immensely rich and strong. We too made weapons and ships and aircraft which the rest of the world could not match or oppose.
We too had armed services superbly trained and equal to every task we set them. Many still living saw the final years of our power and have not yet grown used to our diminished position.
There is always a ready audience for anyone who says we should Make Britain Great Again. The Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, plainly shares such feelings and calls in The Mail on Sunday today for greater spending on our military.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer can’t be trusted to pursue such a policy. Like most Leftists, he flails cluelessly when confronted with military issues, mixing bravado with unrealistic expectations (file photo)
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a Christmas service at a church in the Moscow Region
But he is also canny enough to see that British involvement in any modern war could be risky and unpopular because of the current weakness of our forces. We simply don’t have enough soldiers.
Much of their equipment is obsolete, non-functioning or worn-out. Such weakness has its roots in the cross-party acceptance of a ‘peace dividend’ after the Cold War ended.
Back in 1956, when we still considered ourselves a global power, we spent 7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence.
In the years before the fall of the Berlin Wall we laid out between 4 per cent and 5 per cent of GDP on defence – this was more than all Nato allies except the USA.
Since then, such spending has sagged to about 2 per cent. The money went instead on foreign aid, education and the NHS, and of course on welfare payments. Wrestling it back will not prove that easy in practice. Raising taxes any further is harder still.