The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Don’t defend Nato allies who Osborne: Cameron is acting fail to pay up, say most voters like the PM on world stage
US Editor
LESS than half of Britons think the UK should protect Nato countries that refuse to meet the alliance’s defence spending target, a poll for
reveals.
A survey conducted this week shows scepticism among British voters towards the cornerstone of the defence alliance, which mandates that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Nato has set a target for all members to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence, in an attempt to shore up collective defences against Russia and other hostile states.
Last year 11 of the 31 Nato states met the target, with Poland and the US topping the league tables by spending 3.9 per cent and 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence respectively.
France and Germany both missed the target, but have pledged to meet it in 2024, when Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has said 18 countries will do the same.
The North Atlantic Treaty, which sets out the legal basis for Nato, includes a collective defence article that states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and that other members will come to the attacked state’s aid. However, a poll conducted for by Redfield and Wilton Strategies shows that 48 per cent of British voters believe states that do not meet the target should be defended.
Asked whether countries with smaller budgets should be defended, 28 per cent said they should not, while the remainder said they did not know.
More than half of voters said they agreed or strongly agreed with the suggestion that Europe’s defence relies too much on the United States, which has a budget of $841 billion (£718 billion).
Voters said that the US was the UK’s most important ally, with 50 per cent of respondents ranking it in the top three most important, while Australia and France ranked second, with 31 per cent.
Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, said it would be “a very stupid thing to do” to abandon Nato’s collective defence pact, even if member states do not meet the spending target.
“I certainly feel annoyed that they’re not willing to stump up the full amount of cash, but I would not disavow Nato and say I would not come to their aid,” he said.
“I think Putin will be delighted. Anything that has an effect on the alliance is good news for him, because he sees it as one of the things that stops him doing the dreadful things he wants to do.”
LORD CAMERON is “acting like the British prime minister” on the world stage, George Osborne has said.
Mr Osborne said that the ex-prime minister had “upgraded Britain’s foreign policy clout” since becoming Foreign Secretary in November.
He added that Lord Cameron was “getting the kind of meetings that no normal British foreign secretary would get”, citing his recent visit to Mar a Lago to visit Donald Trump, the former US president.
Speaking on his podcast, Mr Osborne said: “On the world stage, Cameron is acting like the British prime minister, which he was and he’s getting the kind of meetings that no normal British foreign secretary would get.
“There’s no way that James Cleverly, or Liz Truss, when she was foreign secretary before him, would have had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar a Lago.”
Lord Cameron travelled to the Florida residence of the former president – who hopes to return to the White House – earlier this week to discuss the war in Ukraine, Nato and the Middle East.
Mr Osborne, who served as Lord Cameron’s chancellor, added: “It’s not just that he’s the former prime minister, and so has more presence and clout. It’s that he’s got real things to say and he’s using the Foreign Office job to push things that he cares about.
“So on Ukraine, he’s delivering quite a hard message to Republicans. His reason for going to see Trump was, ‘You’ve got to support Ukraine.’”
Since Lord Cameron’s political comeback, questions have been raised as to whether Rishi Sunak risks being upstaged by the former prime minister.
Mr Sunak brought Lord Cameron back into front-line politics last November in a shock return to Westminster.
It comes after reports Mr Osborne clashed with No 10 over its attempt to influence the appointment of a new director for the British Museum.
Sources close to the process have claimed that trustees on the selection panel were instructed by No10 to supply the Prime Minister with two names, from which he or his advisers would choose the new director.