Starmer's defence plan is woeful and our enemies are watching

In January, it emerged that a Ministry of Defence analysis of the Strategic Defence Review calculated that £28billion of extra spending would be required to fund its recommendations and ensure the UK is prepared for a potential war with Russia as early as 2030.

What Starmer announced in yesterday’s Defence Investment Plan is woefully inadequate.

Despite his tub-thumping about ‘doing what it takes’ and ‘meeting the new world head-on’, the reality is that a huge shortfall is built into the defence budget. And it’s likely to get bigger – quickly.

Far from being given £28billion more, the Ministry of Defence will have to make do with just £15billion – of which nearly £4billion is money that was already allotted to other projects.

Yes, there were some eye-catching elements in the DIP package. Yesterday’s headlines focused on Britain’s ‘largest ever drone investment’, for example, with £5billion allotted to unmanned aerial systems. But the reality is that only 20 per cent of that figure is additional investment.

The MoD will also spend £500million on new tech for Special Forces, including the Royal Marine Commandos, and an extra £50million on attack drones equipped with cameras that give the operators a ‘first-person view’, as well as interceptor devices to bring down enemy drones.

There is £115million in the DIP to bolster our defences against the threats posed by artificial intelligence. And the plan includes jet-powered drones taking off from aircraft carriers, and six ‘common combat vessels’ (CCVs) as part of a ‘hybrid Royal Navy’.

Starmer's Defence Investment Plan is woeful, considering that the Ministry of Defence said £28billion of extra spending would be needed to ensure the UK is prepared for war with Russia

General the Lord Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff, says it is a terrible mistake to assume warfare today relies entirely on new tech, as the old weaponry is not yet redundant

These will serve as control hubs for drones, meaning that when the Navy identifies a foreign vessel as a threat, such as a Russian ship, ‘they will do so with outriders, uncrewed ships above and below the surface,’ according to the PM. But this capability will come at a high cost, since that money could have been spent on upgrading our traditional fleet. Instead, the CCVs are expected to replace our Type 45 destroyers, which are currently a mainstay of our sea defences.

At the same time, the Royal Air Force will develop its own drones as well as autonomous ‘wingmen’ designed to fly alongside fighter jets such as Typhoons. Starmer claimed these aircraft, which are due to be ready for testing by 2030, would be ‘invisible to enemy detection’.

The PM also reiterated Britain’s commitment to the £8.6billion Global Combat Air Programme in partnership with Italy and Japan, based on sixth-generation Tempest fighter jets. These, he said, ‘will secure our skies for decades to come’.

All the above goes to show that warfare has become more complex than ever. But it is a terrible mistake to assume it now relies entirely on new tech. The old weaponry is not yet redundant. Britain needs destroyers and main battle tanks as well as drones. We are at real risk of neglecting the unglamorous but necessary parts of our fighting machine, while placing too much trust in the latest electronics.

And we will achieve the appropriate combination of weaponry only if we increase our defence budget.

At the Munich Security Conference last February, Starmer was telling our allies that Britain would be committing 3 per cent of its GDP to defence by 2029, up from about 2.3 per cent.

The reality revealed yesterday is that the actual figure will be nowhere near that – more like 2.7 per cent.

Worse, he also talked of hitting 3.5 per cent of GDP by the middle of the next decade. That target is already slipping away from us – and fast. By contrast, Germany is on target for 3.7 per cent of GDP by 2030 and Sweden is not far behind at 3.5 per cent. Meanwhile, Poland is already spending 4.8 per cent of its GDP on defence and is calling for Nato allies to up spending to 5 per cent by 2030.

Our allies have every right to accuse us of backsliding.

In the years since the end of the Second World War, Britain has been at the forefront of defending Europe, spearheading Nato in its role as the West’s peacekeeper.

As recently as 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, we took the lead in going to its defence. But we are no longer in that position. The potential cost of our failure is incalculable.

Last year, Starmer told our allies Britain would be committing 3 per cent of its GDP to defence by 2029. But it has since been revealed that the actual figure will be nowhere near that

In his ‘coronation’ speech in Manchester on Monday, Burnham made no mention of defence and only the briefest of references to national security, Lord Dannatt writes

Starmer would have been far less vulnerable to Andy Burnham’s coup if he had taken a strong, decisive stance on our national security. Instead, he failed to back his former defence secretary John Healey and former Armed Forces minister Al Carns, who quit in protest – the final death knell for his premiership.

The new Defence Secretary, Dan Jarvis, would surely not have taken the job without a guarantee that more money would be forthcoming. But the top-up was minimal.

Healey and Carns resigned because the increased spending in the DIP amounted to 0.08 per cent of GDP. That has now risen to 0.09 per cent.

Despite protests from Burnham’s team that Starmer had no right, in the dying days of his premiership, to be talking about future plans at all, the outgoing PM insisted on making the announcement. But we have no idea whether Burnham will honour it.

What we do know is that, during his ‘coronation’ speech in Manchester on Monday, Burnham made no mention of defence and only the briefest of references to national security.

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He told us repeatedly that other things, such as devolution, were the ideals closest to his heart. The unwelcome inference is that he is not putting defence at the top of his agenda. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch highlighted this, declaring that if Burnham refuses to find the money to fund defence, he should call a General Election.

This isn’t purely a matter of money, though. It’s about restoring Britain’s role at the front line of Europe’s collective security.

We need to accept that we can no longer rely on the US to come to our aid when next we face attack. That means a readiness to fight a war in whatever form it takes and, as we have seen in Ukraine, that can mean the brutal realities of old-fashioned battlefield conflict as well as developing modern electronic and uncrewed weapons.

The Strategic Defence Review was not a starting point for negotiations and haggling. It identified the bare minimum that our Armed Forces require if we have any hope of keeping Britain safe. And what Starmer announced yesterday falls far short of securing that objective. We need £28billion; he conceded £15billion. We’re aiming for 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 and 3.5 per cent by 2035 but, as we have seen, we’re struggling to get to 2.7 per cent.

Military budgets are not about the cost of fighting a war. That’s incalculably higher, in human lives most of all, as we have seen in the daily tragedy of Ukraine’s struggle to hold back the Russian invasion.

The point of spending money on defence is so that we don’t have to fight a war. It’s about deterrence, not aggression.

Right now, Britain does not have the deterrent we desperately need. The price we could all pay for this failure is unthinkable as this underfunded settlement heightens the risk to our security.

Keir Starmer is a gambler in the last-chance saloon. Andy Burnham is calling ‘time’ – but will he do any better? Our enemies, our allies and our electorate are all watching.

General The Lord Dannatt is a former Chief of the General Staff