Tuesday briefing: How the UK’s military spending row exposes Starmer’s defence dilemma
Good morning.
Good morning. What conflict has raged longer than the hundred years war? The fight between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury over defence spending.
I’d love to claim this as my own, but avoid patter theft this early in the day. So I’ll credit my colleague Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, who spoke to me ahead of this week’s G7 meeting, in France, where Keir Starmer arrived yesterday for what could be his final international summit. The prime minister can anticipate candid discussions about international partnerships in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, both of which may soon demand increased involvement from the British military.
The political row over whether the UK government is spending enough to keep Britain safe and fulfil its international commitments broke into the public sphere with the resignation of defence minister John Healey last Thursday. It continues today as Al Carns, who resigned from his post as armed forced minister on the same day, tells the Guardian in an exclusive interview about “unbelievable” waste at the MoD, and suggests mismanaged programmes such as tanks investment should be scrapped in favour of new technology.
The resignation of two highly respected ministers, only one of whom reportedly fancies a shot in Downing Street, further weakens the prime minister’s position ahead of Andy Burnham’s return to the Commons if he is victorious in this week’s Makerfield byelection.
I spoke to Dan about how an argument about money exposes domestic and international uncertainties around Starmer’s leadership, Britain’s place in the world and the changing face of warfare.
Middle East | Donald Trump has declared that the strait of Hormuz will be “completely open” from Friday, as western leaders gathering at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains battled to prevent the fragile US deal with Iran from almost immediately unravelling.
UK politics | Political hatred and division in the UK is probably worse now than during the Brexit referendum, when Jo Cox was murdered, says Kim Leadbeater, Cox’s sister who is now also a Labour MP.
Crime | A schoolteacher described as a “serial manipulator and a serial liar” has been found guilty of sexually abusing and murdering a baby he and his partner had adopted.
Environment | Half of the world’s children are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards threatening their health, education and survival, according to a Unicef report.
US news | Eight people are presumed dead after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday morning at a US air force base in California’s Mojave Desert, officials said.
There isn’t a lot of agreement about what Starmer has got right in government, but our lobby team will tell you that some MPs remain swayed by his record on the international stage.
He got two things right, says Dan: support for Ukraine and keeping Britain largely out of the US-Israel war on Iran. “He’s also weathered the sheer difficulty of being a British Labour prime minister when a turbulent Republican in the White House is shifting position daily between being your friend and trying to destabilise you.”
But where Starmer has failed to shift the dial is on the strategic problem of Britain’s place in the world during a volatile time. He spoke to this at the Munich Security Conference in February, suggesting that – as the Trump administration disengaged with former allies – it provided an opportunity for “radical renewal” and a more European Nato able to “stand on our own feet”.
Taken together, these factors point to the need to progressively spend more on defence to meet Nato’s target – which Starmer has signed up to, of 3.5% of GDP by 2035. Instead, Dan explains, “we’ve got a modest step up to 2.6% by 2027 and then ‘a big blank’”. Here the essential criticism that Healey and others are making kicks in, says Dan, with “this rhetoric-to-reality gap”.
Healey resigned on a point of principle about long-term defence spending, but he also quit because the prime minister is weak, Dan says bluntly.
Circumscribed by Rachel Reeves’s much maligned fiscal rules, the Treasury has limited room for manoeuvre beyond further reallocation of spending from other parts of government, and Starmer has scant goodwill among remaining ministers. The trouble, Dan reminds me, is that Starmer’s dilemma is not only about cash that may be spent on future projects, but it is also about honouring the international commitments Britain already has signed up to.
If you’ll indulge me a tangent: spending is often presented as a zero-sum scenario between welfare and defence, and not only in the rightwing media. In April, Lord Robertson, who led the government’s Strategic Defence Review in 2025, said: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.” But as the Resolution Foundation’s Ruth Curtice said recently, the peace dividend – the uptick in available funding for other departments from the declining defence spend after the end of the cold war – has been spent on the entire welfare state, with the most dramatic increases in health spending, not just working-age social security.
According to latest Ipsos polling, British voters are pretty evenly split on whether they favour an increase in defence spending or keeping it the same, although they are cautious about the tax-and-spend trade-offs.
The case for increased defence spending is harder to make with a population who experience no direct threat while bombs continue to drop elsewhere. This is despite the general acceptance in military circles that Britain is already under threat on home soil, be that electoral interference from foreign agents, targeting of synagogues by Iranian state proxies. Only yesterday a handler with ties to Russia appeared to have directed arson attacks on property connected to Starmer.
But the problem is that the prime minister had already – very publicly – argued for that increase, warning voters to beware “peddlers of easy answers” such as Reform UK and the Greens risking national security. A more effective narrative-builder than Starmer could have made the argument stick with voters – and his own cabinet.
Starmer’s words at Munich about rebalancing the relationship between Europe and the US is a thread likely to be picked up by Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who pledged en route to the G7 meeting that “the new world order will be built starting with Europe”.
“Do not underestimate how many European countries, particularly smaller ones and those to the east, now look to Britain, as well as to France and Germany, and want leadership,” says Dan.
