Many have welcomed Starmer’s pledge to boost defence spending to 2.5% by 2027, though, as Guido has pointed out, the maths doesn’t quite add up. Slashing foreign aid to 0.3% still leaves a £7.2 billion hole to fill…
Starmer has admitted that this defence uplift now includes “intelligence and security service spending” – not an insignificant amount of the defence budget. Now government sources are staying tight-lipped on whether the £18 billion price tag for the Chagos surrender deal—needed to lease the US-UK military base at Diego Garcia—is factored in, insisting they won’t be drawn into Chagos discussions. Won’t quash accusations that Starmer is fudging the numbers…
UPDATE: Shadow Armed Forces Minister Mark Francois tells Guido:
“As we have been pressing the Government for months to increase Defence spending, we welcome today’s announcement. However, we would like reassurance that none of this uplift is linked to payments for a Chagos deal, which, if it’s heavily front-loaded, could eat up a significant chunk of that, at least in the early years.”
Green Deputy Leader Rachel Millward said:
“The reality is that it’s Zack Polanski who brought the nation, Andy Burnham. And if we hadn’t had the success of the Green Party in this last year since Zack’s been leading, which has been unprecedented, phenomenal success and a growth from about 60,000 members to 230,000, if we hadn’t had that much pressure on Labour, then we’d probably still be in the Starmer regime, which was pretty much ushering in a Reform government with its lurch to the right. So actually, what we’re seeing now is that we’ve set the political agenda and the government is picking that up.”