Corbyn win ‘would encourage jihadis’
Weakness puts Britain at risk claims Defence Secretary
JEREMY Corbyn would put Britain at greater risk of terrorist attack, Sir Michael Fallon warned last night, as the Tories pledged a £1billion-a-year increase in defence spending.
The Defence Secretary’s strongly worded Daily Mail article below came as the Conservatives sought to drive home their advantage on security by making a manifesto commitment to spending at least 2 per cent of GDP on defence.
Theresa May last night said military spending would rise by 0.5 per cent above inflation until at least 2022, extending the existing commitment by two years. The guarantee is worth about £1billion a year to the defence budget, which is due to hit £40billion in 2020. The Prime Minister, who held talks with Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg in Downing Street yesterday, said Mr Corbyn would put defence spending ‘at risk’, adding: ‘As Prime Minister I always have and always will put Britain’s national security first.’
Labour has yet to spell out whether its manifesto will include a commitment to the Nato spending target. But last night further evidence emerged of Mr Corbyn’s distaste for Nato, following the uncovering of new footage in which the Labour leader describes the military alliance as a ‘nonsense’.
It shows Mr Corbyn at an event in Portugal in 2011, saying: ‘I think it’s perfectly right to call in my country for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the non-replacement of them, and in every other country for the reduction in arms expenditure, and to end this nonsense of Nato’s right to intervene anywhere around the world.’ In 2015 he admitted he would prefer Britain not to be in the alliance – credited with keeping peace since the Second World War – and the same year split his party by refusing to back RAF airstrikes on IS in Syria. Mr Corbyn instead said that the Government should open ‘back channels’ to the terrorist group. Last week he suggested that as prime minister he might not even authorise a drone strike on IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – and questioned whether such a move would help achieve a ‘political solution’ in Syria. There have also been suggestions Labour’s manifesto will include a commitment to never again take ‘unilateral military action’, while vowing to work towards a ‘nuclear-free world’.
Sir Michael today warns that the Labour leader’s ‘misguided idealism’ would be ‘a security risk’, with the RAF reported to have killed 1,300 IS targets since 2015.
However a group of 23 military figures have urged the Conservatives to spend more on the armed force to prevent a funding crisis putting them ‘at risk’. In a letter handed to No 10 just hours before Mrs May met Mr Stoltenberg, they accused the Ministry of Defence of using ‘accounting deception’ to meet the 2 per cent Nato spending target. Captain James Glancy, a signatory to the letter, said the West had become ‘complacent’.
And Labour defence spokesman Nia Griffith hit back at the Tories’ ‘hypocrisy’ over defence, accusing them of overseeing major cuts in the budget since 2010.