Cameron puts defence at the heart of battle with Labour
‘A chill has descended across the continent’
BRITAIN’S security will be ‘on the ballot paper’ at the election David Cameron said yesteray as he warned that Labour cannot be trusted on defence.
In his first major speech as Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron said the rise of an ‘axis of authoritarian states’ – such as Russia, Iran, North Korea and China – meant that security now had to be the UK’s ‘top priority’.
Lord Cameron urged EU countries to match Rishi Sunak’s recent commitment to spend at least 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 – and said Labour also had questions to answer about its failure to commit to the target.
‘Labour have not matched the 2.5 per cent, so there’s going to be a very clear choice at the election,’ he said. ‘If you are worried about the dangerous world, if you want Britain to have strong defences, if you want a government that’s absolutely committed to it and has set out a timetable: here are the guys with a plan.
‘And if you want a bunch of people who’ve got no plan, who have got no idea, then it’s a very different case from the Labour Party.’
Labour has accepted that defence spending should rise to 2.5 per cent, but has refused to commit to a timetable for doing so, saying it wants to hold a new defence review if it wins power.
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy acknowledged this week that it was ‘reasonable’ for the US to expect Nato allies to commit to spending 2.5 per cent, adding: ‘We need to get serious about that.’ he added: ‘We’re not in office, we haven’t been able to look at the books. What we’ve said is that we will have a strategic defence review on day one.’
Lord Cameron said security ‘is definitely on the ballot paper’ at the election.
He added: ‘If you ask me “what’s the most important thing we can do right now as a country?”, it is to enhance our security –that is to spend more on defence, to build up our alliances, to work with our partners, to seek out allies, to harden defences at home, to protect ourselves against cyber (attacks), to invest in our intelligence services.
‘All of these things are about recognising the world’s changed fundamentally compared with a decade ago...’
The former prime minister’s decision to turn the screw on Labour over defence followed a wide-ranging speech in which he said that the West had to demonstrate ‘the courage to act’ to protect its interests and values.
Recalling the end of the Cold War, Lord Cameron warned that ‘a chill has once more descended across the European continent’. ‘Those nations closest to Russia seeing what is happening in Ukraine and wondering if they will be next,’ he said. He said the West had to show it was willing to ‘outlast’ Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and ‘adopt a harder edge for a tougher world’.
‘Our adversaries... believe that it is they who are more determined to succeed,’ he added. ‘That they can outlast us, can endure more pain, make more sacrifices. We are in a battle of wills. We all must prove our adversaries wrong – Britain, and our allies and partners around the world. We need to out-compete.’