The Prime Minister has been up in Scotland this morning, ahead of the full publication of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) at 3.30 p.m. today. It will set out the UK’s defence spending priorities for the next ten years, including plans to build up to 12 new nuclear-powered attack submarines and spend £15 billion on the warhead programme.
In a speech, Starmer touted the document as a ‘a blueprint to make Britain safer and stronger, a battle-ready, bomber-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities.’ Three changes will come from this review, he said. The first, a move to ‘war-fighting readiness’. The second: an additional focus on ensuring that everything this government does is to add to Nato’s strength. The third, is to ‘accelerate innovation at a wartime pace’, and make the UK ‘the fastest innovator in Nato.’
Of the three changes, the first is the most interesting. Starmer said that ‘every citizen’ has a role to play in the defence of the country. The world has changed, he warned, meaning that ‘the front line, if you like, is here.’ He rattled off examples: the Barrow submarine engineers, tech experts, and engineers, alongside those in uniform.
The reason why Britain needs to move to a ‘pre-war’ state, he explained, is because ‘the threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the cold war.’ Yet it is precisely the gravity of that threat that critics claim that the government has underestimated in its response today.
On defence, the key question is always how much politicians are willing to spend. But Starmer refused to set a deadline for hitting the 3 per cent GDP target. He said he was ‘100 per cent confident’ that the measures set out in the review ‘can be delivered’ but they would, inevitably, be subject to the state of the public finances.
What then, is the current planned pathway from 2.5 per cent of defence expenditure in 2027 to 3 per cent in 2034? What is the Ministry of Defence’s spending profile on day-to-day resources versus capital investment? What if Nato, as expected, introduces a new higher spending target too? A key summit of alliance members is looming at the Hague in three weeks’ time. Expect the UK’s allies to ask hard questions of Starmer.
Mark Rutte, the Nato chief, has sought to ameliorate Donald Trump’s own goal of 5 per cent by proposing that members increase direct defence expenditures to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2032 and a further 1.5 per cent on wider security-related spending. With Germany and France voicing support, the UK’s current posture does not match the hardening climate of international opinion.
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