Starmer Announces UK Defence Budget Increase

At long last Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has set out a timeline for the long promised increase in Britain’s defence budget to 2.5% GDP by 2027, rising to 3% “in the next Parliament”.

This has been a running sore for his government as voices have been swelling over the past few months encouraging him to get on with it.

The catalyst for his announcement seems to have been Trump’s demands that Europe bears more of the burden of its own defence and stops riding on the USA’s coattails.

But what about funding the British Ministry of Defence’s usual gap between the projects it is running and what it can actually afford (the black hole!)? That shortfall is estimated at £3.9bn next year when the uplift will be £6bn, so a good deal of the rise will initially go to protect existing projects.

Short term this will be made possible by some taking of money from international aid. Longer term, if he’s serious about building to 3% by the next Parliament (2030) then it’s almost certainly going to need an increase in taxation, specifically income tax. And that will be deeply unpopular with the electorate.

Plus, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) immediately pointed out, the figures announced by Starmer don’t quite add up. He seems to have followed in the steps of the last government by announcing a misleadingly large figure for the “extra” defence spending this announcement would entail.

More worrying, perhaps, are the rumours circulating that the money going from the overseas aid budget into defence will be used in part to fund the government’s ill-thought out Chagos plan. That is if Trump doesn’t put the kibosh on *that* deal. Let’s hope the 47^th President puts a stop to it.

But an extra 0.2% of the UK’s GDP is around £6 billion, and this does roughly equate to the size of the cut in the aid budget. Yet Starmer announced a £13.4 billion increase in the defence budget. So, smoke and mirrors from the PM or has his government found an extra £7 billion plus from down the back of the sofa? I think we should be told, don’t you?

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk

Lt Col Stuart Crawford’s latest book Tank Commander (Hardback) is available now

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