... but Labour WON’T match Rishi’s defence spending boost
LABOUR came under fire yesterday for refusing to commit to match the Government’s plans to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps questioned why Sir Keir Starmer would not back the plan, revealed by the Prime Minister this week, despite claiming his ‘changed’ party would ‘never shut its eyes to the threats our country faces’.
John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, said he shared the Government’s ‘ ambition’ to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent but claimed the timeline set out was not fully funded.
And Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, said Labour would only raise spending to 2.5 per cent ‘when circumstances allow’. She said: ‘You wouldn’t expect me to come on and say that we could spend £75 billion by 2030 without having a plan as to where we were going to get the money from.’
On Tuesday, Rishi Sunak promised to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, spending more than £75 billion extra on defence over the next six years compared with current levels. It was a victory for the Mail’s Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless campaign, launched after there was no new defence cash in last month’s Budget. The commitment will be funded by slashing 72,000 civil service jobs — and Mr Shapps said he wanted ‘people on the front line, not in the offices’.
Labour has promised to conduct a strategic defence and security review in its first year in office to assess the resources required to meet the threats facing the UK. In the Commons, Mr Healey accused the Government of producing a ‘ fake figure’ of £75 billion as he questioned how the increase in defence spending will be funded.
‘If this 2030 plan had been in a budget, it would have been independently checked, openly costed, and fully funded,’ he told MPs. ‘So where is the additional money coming from? How much from which other R&D (research and development) budgets? How much from cutting how many civil servants in which departments?’
But Mr Shapps accused the shadow defence secretary of spending ‘all his time explaining-or rather, avoiding explaining-why Labour is not backing 2.5 per cent, which has a schedule, a timescale and figures that have been published’.
‘It is no good for him and the Leader of the Opposition to go up to Barrow and to claim that they are all in favour now of the nuclear defence, because they stood on a platform with a leader who wanted to scrap Trident, pull us out of NATO, and turn the army into a peace corps,’ he added.
Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer, meanwhile, accused Labour of refusing to back the plan, adding: ‘Instead, they want to spend years holding a review as the world gets more dangerous while refusing to act to keep the British people safe.
‘This is the same old Labour Party that sent our Armed Forces into battle with appalling equipment. The idea they can be trusted on defence – only a few years after trying to put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street – is absurd.’
A fortnight ago, Sir Keir – in an article for the Daily Mail – insisted his party is now ‘utterly committed to our nation’s defences’. He described his commitment to Nato and the UK’s nuclear deterrent as ‘unshakeable’.
afTeR wheeling out the heavy artillery to promise the biggest boost in defence spending for a generation, Rishi sunak was on manoeuvres in Germany yesterday.
On top of his commendable pledge to bolster our threadbare armed forces, the Prime Minister also unveiled plans for deeper military co-operation with Berlin.
In Labour HQ, Mr sunak’s vow to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 exploded like a howitzer shell.
It was left to shadow foreign secretary emily Thornberry to try (and risibly fail) to explain her party’s defence policy.
In a toe- curling Radio 4 interview, she refused to commit to match the PM’s funding commitment or even say whether Britain should be on a ‘war footing’. With Vladimir Putin and other tyrants on the rise, she lamely promised to hold a review.
This was a revealing performance. Labour has always been at best ambivalent towards the military, at worst downright hostile.
sir Keir starmer himself believed Jeremy Corbyn was fit to hold the highest political office – a man who has spent his entire career opposing everything the British armed forces stands for.
But a fortnight ago, sir Keir insisted Labour was now ‘utterly committed to our nation’s defences’. after yesterday’s retreat, that tub-thumping rhetoric seems to have misfired as badly as a broken cannon.