Reform UK’s finance spokesman Robert Jenrick met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Washington on Friday, delivering a message to the United States that Britain would be a positive NATO ally under a Nigel Farage government.
The United Kingdom will boost its spending on defence to the equivalent of three per cent of gross domestic product by 2030 and then go further, an emissary of what party supporters will hope will be the next British government told U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Friday. Robert Jenrick, who was one of only a handful of British political figures personally invited by Vance to meet him for talks when he holidayed in England last summer revealed he’d met with the Vice President and stated: “Great to catch up with [Vice President JD Vance]. Our allies know Reform is the party with the plan to fund our military at 3% of GDP by 2030.”
Defence spending and broader British military capability is something of a prominent question in UK politics at the moment after years of successive governments running down the armed forces to find more funding for social welfare programmes, and a revolt against erstwhile Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Britain failing to meet its NATO targets dominating his final days in power.
Under Starmer, funding was only promised to increase defence spending as a proportion of total GDP to 2.68 per cent by 2030, and with little said of what would come after that. Britain now has a new left-wing Prime Minister after Starmer was brought down in a palace coup by his Labour Party, but new leader Andy Burnham has said precious little too about defence in general, and how it is to be funded.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been holding European NATO members to account on their carrying their own weight within the alliance across both his presidencies, calling on those states to do more than any American administration in decades, and possibly since the end of the Cold War. As European NATO members felt protected by the American military umbrella and perceived no immediate threats, defence spending plummeted after 1991, and the alliance was moved in 2015 to institute a bare-minimum of two per cent of GDP from each member on defence.
While NATO’s more involved partners managed this, others were more reluctant and even now, over a decade later, have had to be dragged to two per cent by Trump’s leadership. Yet two per cent is evidently not enough as the world shifts into a new and less stable phase, and a new five per cent target by 2035 is being sought. This would comprise 3.5 per cent on core defence spending — which Reform has vowed to reach — and a further 1.5 per cent on broader security spending, including reindustrialisation to make Western economies more robust.
The Daily Telegraph reports Jenrick told them after the meeting that Vice President Vance has “a deep affection for the United Kingdom, and we’re very fortunate to have him as a friend and ally of our country” and said among things discussed was the UK’s defence posture, which has taken a severe reputation hit in recent months.
Jenrick said: “I reaffirmed that a Reform government would meet the 3 per cent target by 2030 and exceed it, reaching 3.5 per cent by 2035. I set out that we had already identified £45bn of savings to fund it, primarily through reductions to welfare spending, and that we would be doing more in the months to come.”
It is understood that Jenrick and Vance last met in Summer 2025, when the the Vice President and his family vacationed in the rural and well-to-do Cotswolds region of England. Several of the people invited by Vance to meet with him for meals and talks at the rented country manor house included Reform UK figures and Conservative Party personalities who have since crossed the floor to join Reform.
Among them were party leader Nigel Farage himself, who had breakfast with Vance. Top conservative thinker Danny Kruger joined Vance for a BBQ and has since been appointed head of Reform’s department for preparing for government. Long-time Vance friend and close confidant James Orr, the University of Cambridge academic and philosopher — the Vice President’s “British Sherpa” — was of course also a guest, and is now Reform UK’s head of policy.
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