PM Keir Starmer will have to find the money to boost defence spending from somewhere (Image: Getty)
This is a Labour Prime Minister. Party members love foreign aid. They’d double it, triple it, and still demand more. And yet Starmer has just slashed it from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP.
How has Labour responded? By sucking it up.
Even virtue-signalling Foreign Secretary David Lammy has swallowed his pain, saying “we must deal with the world as it is”. I bet that hurt.
No-one becomes a Labour MP to cut aid to developing countries. Or spend more on guns, ammo, missiles, drones and soldiers. But that’s what Starmer has done.
If the PM can get away with this about-turn, he can get away with anything. No spending commitment is safe.
The economy is on a knife edge, partly due to the mess left by the , who spaffed public cash for 14 years, and partly due to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who’s botched the clean-up.
She’s now desperately trying to balance the books, but her numbers don’t add up.
That means her Spring Statement on 26 March will bring hefty spending cuts and probably tax hikes too.
Reeves was struggling even before Starmer pledged to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027.
She’ll find the maths even harder now.
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Reeves will have to scrutinise every line of UK benefits spending. And it won’t just be so-called benefits scroungers who take a hit.
Pensioners could be on the front line.
I wrote last week that . The mechanism already has plenty of enemies, especially in the Treasury. Now they’ll feel emboldened.
The day US President praised and damned Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a dictator, our world turned upside down.
Suddenly, the US and Europe are on different sides. It’s an outrageous move, and one I deplore – as do most Britons.
But we brought this on ourselves. Europe and the UK assumed the US would always protect us.
We blew the so-called “peace dividend” after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, leaving US taxpayers to foot the bill for policing the world.
Tory governments blew tens or even hundreds of billions on everything from HS2 to faulty Test & Trace apps, and left a massive debt and deficit. What a waste.
Labour would do the same, but it can’t. This is going to hurt.
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Spending 2.5% of GDP on defence won’t be enough. Nor will 3%. Or 3.5%.
Yet old habits die hard. Starmer is still committed to spending billions on the Chagos Islands.
He’s allowing Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to throw and another .
We’re spending almost £5billion a year on asylum and refugees. Everything must now be scrutinised.
Starmer fiddled the figures in his defence boost, but those days are over too. .
The PM can’t talk of sending UK troops to unless he trains them, pays them and funds their kit.
Promises must be backed by real money. So where will it come from?
Starmer will meet resistance at every step. Labour faithful will fight plans to cut working-age benefits or make it harder to claim the Personal Independence Payment.
Soon he could be looking at bus passes, free NHS prescriptions at 60 and ultimately the .
I’ve noticed growing chatter against the over the last week.
Unless Starmer tackles waste elsewhere, all these could go. The Daily Express has stood squarely behind the for years. We may have to man the defences again.