Sir Keir Starmer has announced an extra £15bn for defence over the next four years, but warned it would mean some road and energy projects will now be scrapped.
The UK prime minister said on Tuesday that the long-awaited defence investment plan (DIP) would reverse the “corrosive hollowing out” of the armed forces and transform a military that has been “underfunded and unsuited to the threats we face”.
He called the blueprint “a platform on which I know my successor will build”. It has been signed off by Andy Burnham, to whom Starmer is expected to hand over power as soon as July 20.
UK is already the sixth biggest spender on defence without this latest “upgrade”. Where is all the money going if - supposedly - we don’t have a large standing army, much of the hardware doesn’t work and it takes weeks for a military vessel to set sail? Lots of this is propaganda, of course. Maybe not upgrading all the nukes at a cost of £63 billion might shift some of the money? Maybe asking WHO is being defended would be a good starting point? (And it aint the ordinary UK citizen.)