Labour would boost defence spending and the UK's nuclear deterrent programme, Keir Starmer has said amid mounting warnings about Britain's "eroded" Armed Forces.
Defence is "the number one issue for any government" facing "rising global threats and growing Russian aggression", the party leader told i news. He vowed to match the Conservatives' pledge to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, up from just under 2.3%, "as soon as resources allow that to happen".
Starmer also pledged to build at least four new nuclear submarines, in what the news site's political editor Hugo Gye called a "deliberate contrast" to Labour's former leader Jeremy Corbyn, an opponent of the Trident nuclear programme.
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A total of 18 of Nato's 31 members have pledged to up their defence spending to 2% of their GDP, amid fears of a Russian attack and concern over comments by Donald Trump that, as president, he would encourage Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" to allies who didn't meet the threshold.
But while the alliance is set to get a "record amount" of money, said CNN's Luke McGee, Nato officials admit privately that "this is only a starting point that needs to be built on considerably" following decades of underspending. An unnamed senior diplomat told the site that the 2% commitment "has to be a floor, not a ceiling".
Former Armed Forces minister James Heappey has called for Britain to increase its defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. As part of war preparations, the country should also reinvigorate a large "strategic reserve" force of thousands of veterans, he told Sky News.
But even 3% may not be enough following a decade of austerity that has "hollowed out" Britain's Armed Forces, said Paul Mason in City A.M. The Ministry of Defence is £17 billion short of the money needed to pay for its 10-year equipment plan, and long-promised military commitments – such as a warfighting division to deter Vladimir Putin from attacking our allies in the Baltic States – have "simply evaporated".
Compared with its big European counterparts, Britain is "particularly ill-equipped" to face the threat of Russia attacking a Nato member, said Chris Cook in the Financial Times. The UK already spends more, "but not well – and not enough to match what it wants". The Army, Navy and Air Forces are "deeply eroded", with staffing and stockpile shortages.
Given this dire situation, said Mason, the 2.5% spend pledged by both Labour and the Tories "would just be like throwing water onto a dry sponge".
What next?
Starmer's decision to match the Tory spending pledge will increase pressure on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to "go further", said i news's Gye.
But a Labour government might find that equally difficult, said Cook in the FT. After inheriting a "lousy fiscal position, combined with 14 years of skin-and-bone public services that need a lot of patching up", Starmer "will find there are expensive problems everywhere".
