The United Kingdom, which has barely scraped the NATO minimum defence spend of two per cent of GDP for years, will raid its foreign aid budget to bring forward hitting the new 2.5 per cent level, the government says.
Just weeks after the British government strongly criticised President Donald Trump for cutting the nation’s foreign aid budget with his freeze on USAid, Westminster is doing just the same thing, taking money out of aid to boost the Ministry of Defence.
Despite all the warlike rhetoric from Westminster for several years, the support for the Ukraine war, and warnings that the world is entering a new and more dangerous era, British defence spending as a proportion of its total economy has remained stubbornly low. In the decade that Poland has nearly doubled its defence spend, the United Kingdom has managed only to drag its spend including personnel, estates, and investment in new equipment and technology from 2.03 per cent to 2.33 per cent.
The left-wing Labour government had pledged to get that spend to the new 2.5 per cent target widely acknowledge as the minimum for the alliance — still way short of new targets meant to deter future Russian aggression at three, three and a half, or even five per cent — but the timeline specified was so long it would become a problem for the next government, not this one. Speaking on Tuesday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer now vows to condense that effort, reaching 2.5 by 2027, not in the 2030s.
The Prime Minister said: “Starting today, I can announce this Government will begin the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.
“We will deliver our commitment to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence but we will bring it forward so that we reach that level in 2027. And we will maintain that for the rest of this parliament. And let me spell that out, that means spending £13.4 billion more on defence every year from 2027.”
He said he was setting an “ambition” to get to three per cent next decade, although whether he’ll be in power by then to follow through is another matter.
As for where the money was coming from, rather than raising taxes or borrowing, Starmer announced it would come from slashing the UK’s foreign aid budget. He continued: “In the short term it can only be funded through hard choices and in this case that means we will cut our spending on development assistance, moving from 0.5 per cent of GNI [Gross National Income] today to 0.3 per cent in 2027, fully funding our increased investment in defence.”
Just weeks after criticising the Trump White House for cutting aid, the United Kingdom has followed, and all to fund a defence spending boost demanded by the U.S. President of his NATO allies to do more. In all, UK foreign aid spending as a proportion of the economy will be less than half of what it was before the pandemic.
Starmer’s decision to hollow out aid to pay for defence is a politically enormous step in the United Kingdom, where it has been the only ringfenced element of the government’s budget after an intervention by former leader David Cameron to really lean into ‘soft power’. Politicians seem extremely emotionally attacked to foreign aid — as evidenced by the bitter response to the Trump Presidency taking USAid to task earlier this month — and there have been howls of protest in Westminster today.
The former leader of Starmer’s Labour party Jeremy Corbyn was among the first with a condemnation, accusing Starmer of making the world less safe by trading aid for bombs. Of course, one of the justifications of massive foreign aid budgets given by its proponents is that handing money over to foreign countries can prevent wars.
Britain’s Daily Telegraph reports the aid sector itself — which of course has an interest — also condemned the decision, with ActionAid calling it “reckless”, Save the Children a “betrayal” and Water Aid calling it “cruel”.
Cutting the aid budget further won’t be enough to boost the British miitary further, however. NATO has spoken repeatedly now about new perspectives being needed on the trade-offs between defensible states and welfare states, and this will be a harder sell to fundamentally liberal European states — Britain included — than giving away less money to foreigners.
Germany’s defence minister believes he has another answer, however, mooting offloading the cost of defence today onto future generations through debt. Feeling more vulnerable to Russian aggression than the United Kingdom — which benefits from the English Channel to deter any warring armies — Germany is now speaking enthusiastically about bringing back conscription and even a nuclear deterrent.
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