The <em>Times </em>editorial Wednesday put Burnham on his marching orders. The need to vastly increase the arms budget and the funding defic
...budget and the funding deficit “should spur him to take radical action on pensions and welfare.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer published his long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on June 30, committing an additional £15 billion to the armed forces over four years. It leaves Starmer’s successor-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, having to find tens of billions of pounds in cuts to social spending to pay for a hike in military funding. The DIP was meant to fund the Labour government’s 10-year Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published in June last year, but its funding commitments extend only to the four-year spending review period ending in 2029/30. The plan takes total military spending to £298 billion in the period to 2029/30—almost £80 billion a year by the end of the decade. Speaking at a drone factory in Berkshire flanked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Starmer hailed “the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the 1980s”, raising spending from 2.3 percent of GDP in 2024 to 2.7 percent. However, he added, this would only put “us on a trajectory to reach 3 percent in the next Parliament [after a scheduled 2029 general election]”. Every line of the 80-page DIP is directed at preparing for war with Russia, declaring that “President Putin’s aggression is growing around our shores, in the High North, across Europe, and in Ukraine.” Ramping up military spending is required as “NATO is now warning that Russia could be ready to use military force against the Alliance by the end of this decade.” More than £63 billion over four years goes to the nuclear weapons programme—Dreadnought submarines, a new warhead and 12 nuclear-capable F-35A jets—alongside £11 billion for munitions and six new weapons factories, more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, and £8.6 billion for the Tempest fighter programme. To secure massive future profits for UK arms manufacturers such as BAE Systems, Babcock and MBDA, the government announced a taxpayer-backed £50 billion export finance facility—the largest allocation in UK Export Finance’s history—to underwrite foreign purchases of British weapons. The £15 billion includes £1.5 billion prised from the Treasury in the three weeks since Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns resigned over the earlier £13.5 billion settlement proposal. However, only £11.6 billion of the £15 billion is new money. For the military cabal and their backers in the media, who determine the policies of governments, the DIP confirms their verdict that the Starmer government had to go for refusing to stump up far more than £15 billion and pay for this by slashing welfare. Military chiefs had demanded at least £28 billion to fund a “black hole” in the Ministry of Defence’s budget—without which all 62 recommendations of last year’s Strategic Defence Review could not be met.
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Governments across Europe are slashing welfare funding to pay for the military buildup. The continuing austerity will ensure that the far-right gain power across the continent. They will fall into line behind Russia, making the military buildup pointless. Those arms will then be used to steal critical minerals from developing nations.
Should Europe go to war with Russia, the resulting carbon emissions will probably shove us over the edge where the climate is concerned.
