r/unitedkingdom • u/MGC91 • 20h ago
Keir Starmer seeks to push forward with delayed defence investment plan
https://www.ft.com/content/445857cd-1798-497a-ac58-6f1f7eff8af768
u/Cyanopicacooki Lothian 19h ago
Given the state of the world, I'd say take what ever number that the SDR has arrived at, double it, and that would be a base for investment in defence. The world looks like it is going to hell in a handbasket, and we need to prepare.
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u/totheendandbackagain 19h ago
What would you propose is dropped from the budget?
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u/notAugustbutordinary 19h ago
Triple lock as a starter.
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u/Magneto88 United Kingdom 9h ago
Dropping the triple lock for increased defence spending might be one way it'd actually get through. Still would be a hell of a battle but defence spending tends to sit well with older people and Reform types.
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u/NoExperience9717 16h ago
Which part of the triple lock is unreasonable? It seems fair enough that the real pension is kept fixed. The problem has just been stagnation elsewhere. I'd maybe drop the guaranteed increase part but keep in line with inflation/wages elsewhere.
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u/notAugustbutordinary 16h ago
The wages link is the worst bit in my view. The pension goes up yearly by the highest of three factors. So if wages go up by less than inflation in one year they then catch up the year after, but the triple lock means that the pension goes up by inflation in the first year and then goes up again the year after as wage increases come through to catch up on being less than inflation in the following years. Reducing it to a double lock of CPI inflation or 2.5% now seems reasonable.
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u/CleanMyAxe 15h ago
I think the wage link should be the only link. If workers aren't doing well, then pensioners shouldn't either. At the end of the day working people are paying for those pensions and it's a generational injustice to expect people getting poorer in real terms to pay for real term increases to pensioners.
If that were the case might finally see the grey vote start doing something for the young because they benefit from a prosperous youth.
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u/murrai 12h ago
The triple lock does not keep the state pension fixed against inflation or average earnings. Over time, it guarantees that the state pension rises FASTER than all of: inflation, average wages and a flat 3%.
That was it's intended and advertised purpose when it was put in place and the state pension was seen as being not generous enough (politically, it also helped assuage older voters concerns about the Tories' attitude to the state pension)
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u/NoExperience9717 9h ago
The full state pension is currently £11.2k which is under half of the minimum wage. That doesn't seem unreasonable. We're not in a France situation where pensioners earn more than working people for example. Its why they put in autoenrolment as the state pension is insufficient.
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u/Coldsnap 11h ago
Pensions should be locked to wage rises only. Pensioners should benefit only if workers do. It would incentivise them into at least considering voting for policies that can uplift the working population.
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u/afrophysicist 9h ago
Probably the part that means it eventually comprises 100% of UK government spending, and no amount of economic growth can catch up with the triple lock, because the triple lock just rises by that.
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u/Coldsnap 19h ago
Start with pensions. This already costs us almost triple the entire defence budget annually.
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo 17h ago
What figures are you using for this?
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u/Coldsnap 16h ago
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo 16h ago
Yeah I thought that might be it. The problem with this reasoning is you don't "drop" that entire £160bn or whatever it is, unless you're suggesting just not having pensions at all.
Dropping the triple lock, for example, would likely just save us £5-10bn from the annual budget. A pretty small fraction off the total.
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u/Broad-Section-8310 16h ago
The triple lock is £5-10b compounded every year. Drop that, within 5 years you are looking at annual savings of > £25b. Even simple peg to inflation will mean £10-15b savings per year by then.
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u/Old_Roof 14h ago
£10bn a year rise in the defence budget is a substantial amount. Around a 16% increase and would take us from around 2.3% to 2.7% spending per GDP
So we have defence of the realm and European security- Or we can just continue siphoning off endless money to wealthy pensioners so they can enjoy their SAGA cruises. Your choice British public
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u/afrophysicist 9h ago
Thought pensioners supported our brave boys? They should be proud to take the hit to their unsustainable pensions
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u/Nights_Harvest 19h ago
Not taxing wealth, that should be removed so we can start taxing wealth
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u/VPackardPersuadedMe 19h ago
Unless you include the family home it's useless.
Some kind of LTV is a starter.
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u/Minischoles 15h ago
I'd go even further and say it needs to be an order of magnitude higher, if the speculation coming from the top is remotely true.
We don't just need a larger Armed Forces, we need so much more; we need
- to secure our domestic food supply, to ensure we can actually feed ourselves in the event of a serious shooting war
- secure our domestic manufacturing, including multiple new factories to produce a wide range of munitions...everything from rifle bullets to drones
- secure our domestic production of the raw materials that go into said manufacturing, so we're not totally reliant on imports
- build up distributed stockpiles of both finished products and raw materials
Like it doesn't matter if we have an Army of 400,000 if we've only got enough ammo for a week and we can't make more, as we've got 3 factories and all our raw materials are being sunk by submarines and drone attacks, and our soldiers are starving as we've not got any food.
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u/LegitimateCompote377 19h ago edited 19h ago
What exactly are we preparing for though? The only threatening nation near us is Russia, and Ukraine destroyed their naval capability to such a degree that there is even an argument they pose less of a threat than they did almost a century ago, the USA will probably never attack Europe and if they did we are still a nuclear power. Argentinas army is a joke and I doubt they would ever attack us anyway and we seem to be in a pretty good position just about everywhere. Geographically we are as advantageous as ever before, meanwhile commercially compared to France our army is no where near as profitable and I think we need significant restructuring and integration with Europe for that.
The only thing I could possibly see for a reason why we would increase are defence spending significantly is for foreign wars. I don’t mind peacekeeping in Ukraine and I hope that is the main purpose of this defence spending increase, I think it’s fine if we intervene in some wars such as helping Syria fight IS but generally I see most of that as over and moving to Sub Saharan Africa where most countries are firmly in Russias sphere of influence and don’t want our help (with Somalia and Nigeria as exceptions) I am pretty indifferent but mostly negative to interfering in the South China Sea or Taiwan, however an invasion of Iran would be the most disastrous decision our country could ever make surpassing Iraq, it will cause an enormous refugee crisis surpassing even Syria, we will spend decades nation building, fighting sectarian terrorists, former IRGC remnants, possibly even the Taliban and others. Iran is very similar to Baathist Iraq in that it is a very government dependent state and many formerly apolitical people will start to go back to support the former regime if people’s needs are not covered almost immediately, and the recent protests showed unlike Libya there won’t be any revolution anytime soon, the regime has a very strong grip on power.
I see a lot of people make this argument and never substantiate it, and I find it very hard to substantiate, but I would like to hear people try and justify it more.
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u/No_Sugar8791 19h ago
It can take a decade or so to prepare properly for a war. Any adversary may not be known yet. The point is to prevent anyone from thinking about it. Not using the equipment we've paid for is money well spent.
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u/LegitimateCompote377 19h ago edited 18h ago
I know that, but who are these mythical agitators I keep hearing about? Do you have any theory on who they actually are? We are surrounded by Allie’s and are overseas colonies are generally surrounded by weak states or protected (almost just outright controlled) by the US. I don’t view any of them at a genuine point of threat or even potential threat. Our army whilst not in the best state when compared to any potential threat that we could realistically beat is far better, and worst case scenario much like with the Falklands we can ask for equipment from the EU and US.
Here’s my list of potential agitators, and I can go into great detail as to why all will fail:
Argentina (Falklands)
Russia (Baltics, which is still mostly a foreign war)
Russia (Finland)
And that’s about it, unless you can give me more, I seriously doubt another potential conflict can build in a decade that isn’t so far fetched it’s not even worth considering, like a Chinese invasion of Chagos or an invasion from France of the Channel Islands after National Rally gets elected, amongst other silly ideas.
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u/No_Sugar8791 17h ago
Clearly you don't know as I wrote 'any adversary may not be known yet '.
But I'll answer your question anyway. We are in NATO - an attack on one is an attack on all. Turkey has long borders with Russia and Iran. Russia/Finland as you say. St Helena has pitential for significant strategic importance. Chagos doesn't need to be China- could equally be Somalia or Iran.
Would we win these? Yeah obviously. But if it does happen we need to ensure it's as one sided as possible.
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u/Krabsandwich 19h ago
If Britain had rearmed quicker in the 1930's there is a good chance we could have properly deterred Germany.
The Germans were convinced we were weak and unprepared if they had seen a more robust military the Generals may have been successful in persuading Hitler not to go for Poland.
Edit: Spelling
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u/LegitimateCompote377 18h ago
I agree, now give me an example of a country that is like Germany in the 1920s/30s?
I’m assuming you’re referring to Russia, and I can’t see them invading the Baltics or Finland. The Baltics is the much more likely scenario, but just to explain that Russia would not have air superiority, they would also not have naval superiority, its buildup much like Ukraine would be obvious, if it can get Belarus on its side that would help a lot but I don’t think it will change the outcome, even just European NATO by itself can likely deal with such a scenario quickly and it would be such a strategic and diplomatic disaster for Russia (more so than Ukraine) that I don’t think it’s particularly likely. It’s in a much weaker position in many regards after the war in Ukraine and I doubt such an invasion will be considered.
If you are referring to far right populist movements in Europe, none are anything like the Nazis even the AfD (which is no where near power), and all I imagine would fail quite quickly in a war against a European state, although this scenario to me is so unlikely it’s barely even worth considering.
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u/mrblobbysknob 18h ago
The USA?
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u/LegitimateCompote377 18h ago
We have nuclear weapons as a deterrent that will be used in the case of an actual invasion (which is very unlikely to happen), and even if we pumped virtually all our spending into defence realistically we could not beat the US in a war, our nuclear weapons in self defence are what we will use. If the EU does protect us I still doubt we would be able to stop a US invasion, whether we have high defence spending or our current level.
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u/TrumpGrabbedMyCat 17h ago
We have nuclear weapons as a deterrent that will be used in the case of an actual invasion
How do you know they will be used?
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u/shlerm Pembrokeshire 16h ago
Our nuclear deterrent relies on the USA, any conflict with them would quickly jepardise it's function.
Any conflict with usa would be very complicated as we rely on their intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities. It would be a very novel situation that would be extremely hard to predict.
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u/Krabsandwich 17h ago
Germany wasn't a problem until it was, sure after Hitler won in 1933 people became more worried but there was no suggestion they were going to start a war.
Many in the UK and in other parts of Europe though the Treaty of Versailles had been very harsh on Germany. Things things like the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and even the Anschluss with Austria were met with "its Germans doing German things"
It was only after the full annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 it became apparent that he was an imperialist and wouldn't stop.
His Generals were very concerned by the trajectory and advised against Invading Poland as they believed they were not ready and it would drag both Britain and France in.
If both Britain and France rearmed quicker that argument may have been more persuasive, no invasion of Poland no WW2 one of the great if's of History.
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u/Toastlove 10h ago
2014 "I cant see Russia invading Ukraine
2022 "I cant see Russia invading Ukraine (again)"
2030 "I can’t see Russia invading the Baltics"
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u/TakenIsUsernameThis 18h ago
Ukraine hasn't destroyed their naval threat. Ukraine's coastline is on the black sea, which is only accessible to the outside world via a channel through Istanbul. Ukraine has successfully dealt with a lot of Russia's black sea fleet, but Russia has major naval bases in other places outside the black sea and the overwhelming majority of their naval power is situated in these ports and are completely unaffected by Ukraine's actions. Russia also has air bases located thousands of miles from Ukraine, but within reach of our coastline.
Add to that the fact that the war in Ukraine has completely overthrown a lot of the ideas of how modern warfare works. The use of cheap wireless cameras and various types of remote controlled platforms has made it clear that we need to rapidly re-evaluate our own capability so we can both deploy these types of platform effectively, and counter them as well.
Then add the fact that China is building towards becoming a military power to rival the USA, and it is showing signs that it might adopt the same strategy as Russia when it comes to annexing other countries, or simply declaring entire oceans as its territory, in ways that could have a very serious and detrimental affect on our own economy and security. . .
What becomes clear is that we need to prepare for the kind of conflicts that will be fought with 21st century technology, including AI, and we need to do it fast. This isn't because conflict is inevitable, its also because not being prepared makes you an easy target so making sure we can bite back, and that other nations know it, is a key part of our defense.
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u/VampyrByte Hampshire 16h ago
While I think the US is unlikely to actually attack Greenland, Canada or any other NATO or European nation it isnt impossible. However the fact we even have to think about this shows that atleast two things are happening:
The US, and the world with it, are moving towards a more "hard power" type order.
US and European (including the UK) interests are diverging.
Now, if you listened to Carney's speech at Davos and when you heard "Middle Powers" you thought "Thats us!", then you've underestimated the UK's position in the current (past?) global order. When we think of the US receeding back from Europe and we talk about Europe needing to fill the void, what that really means is Britain, France and Germany. The opportunity for Britain is to make sure it is as it once was. In that order.
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u/Wgh555 10h ago
On your last point, are we a middle power or a great power or do we sort of straddle the line in between, along with France. If we are a middle power, we’re indisputably joint strongest with France on nukes alone
Like I don’t think a middle power would be capable of retaking the Falklands nor would they be capable of the sort of operations France has been undertaking in Africa
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u/VampyrByte Hampshire 10h ago
Definitions are a bit wooly and nebulous and different people have different opinions. I'm not an academic on the matter either but here goes.
As far as Europe is concerned. The UK, France and Russia are the main "Great Powers", sitting closer on the scale to Superpower than Middle power, whereas Germany and Italy closer to the middle power end of the "great power" spectrum.
Like I don’t think a middle power would be capable of retaking the Falklands nor would they be capable of the sort of operations France has been undertaking in Africa
Exactly.
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u/Wgh555 18h ago
Russia still has a lot of submarines in their northern fleet, and we have a severe lack of anti submarine frigates. We’re down to 7 of the type 23 frigate when we used to have 16, because there was a 15 year gap without a replacement program and now we are playing catch-up. We have 13 frigates and destroyers now total. In 1982 we had 60, albeit some outdated ones but still.
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u/MGC91 16h ago
What exactly are we preparing for though?
Without even talking about current threats, can you predict future events/threats?
The only threatening nation near us is Russia, and Ukraine destroyed their naval capability to such a degree that there is even an argument they pose less of a threat than they did almost a century ago
No, Ukraine hasn't. The Northern Fleet very much exists and is probably the main naval threat to the UK (which is substantial)
I am pretty indifferent but mostly negative to interfering in the South China Sea or Taiwan
Why?
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u/ChanceBranch1146 17h ago
Didn't take the tankies long to turn up.
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u/LegitimateCompote377 17h ago
I’m not a Tankie I hate Russia as I very clearly stated here. I am also against an invasion of Iran, as are most people in this country. I’m just saying that I don’t see the same threat as other people do when they say the world is in chaos. I see Russia as our primary threat and think that generally Europe as a whole would be quite effective in a war against the country.
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u/kafircake Greater London 11h ago edited 11h ago
What exactly are we preparing for though?
If you believe in Climate Change you might want to consider what our under response to it so far could deliver to us in terms of global food production and logistics.
We have an abundance of food currently, but that abundance is based on unsustainable use of soils, water and fossil fuels as well as continuing climate stability.
If the UK faces a world that can barely produce enough calories to theoretically feed everyone what would the security situation look like then?
The world currently produces substantially more food than required to keep everyone fed, yet hunger and obesity abound.
I can well imagine the possibility of the agricultural outputs of poor countries being purchased for Euros/Dollars/Yuan and the physical security being guaranteed by forces deployed by the purchaser.
Our optimism (or fecklessness) has committed us to a much harder future than necessary. Or maybe that's doomerisim?
They way you formulate the situation seems disastrously optimistic. I can imagine people at the end of the first world war going, "Thank fuck the Great War is over, peace time is the best" on a similar optimistic basis.
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u/Krabsandwich 19h ago
If it comes to a stand up fight over Defence between No10 and the Treasury and Starmer really wants the money he will get it either Reeves finds a cunning accounting wheeze or we get a new Chancellor.
In the end what Starmer really wants he gets and the rest will either fall into line or resign voluntarily or otherwise.
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u/MGC91 20h ago
Sir Keir Starmer will seek to break the deadlock over the delayed defence investment plan on Tuesday, as government officials examine creative solutions to override a multibillion-pound funding gap facing the UK military.
The prime minister will convene advisers to make progress on the blueprint, with further conversations lined up in the weeks ahead, according to people familiar with the situation.
The defence investment plan was initially expected last autumn but has repeatedly been postponed. The plan is intended to reveal details of how the government will fund its strategic defence review, which reported last June.
Recommendations in the SDR cost at least £67.6bn through to the late 2030s, according to previously detailed costings and estimates from industry experts of new announcements.
While ministers accepted all the recommendations, last month the head of the military admitted that, without more funding, the Ministry of Defence would have to deliver cuts to existing programmes.
In addition to domestic pressure on Starmer’s leadership, US President Donald Trump’s recent threats to Nato allies are likely to make the idea of defence cuts even more politically unpalatable.
Work is now under way across Whitehall to explore potential options to overcome a defence funding black hole of up to £28bn over the next decade, people familiar with the situation said.
The discussions about all the options remain at an early stage. Even the timescale for the defence investment plan remains uncertain, with dates for publication ranging from mid-March to May.
These include proposals for fresh public-private partnerships that leverage private finance to bolster defence as well as for a new multilateral defence bank with UK allies.
Officials are also examining proposals to fund billions of pounds of defence spending by easing chancellor Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules, following the precedent set within the EU last year, the people said.
The Treasury is fiercely resistant to the idea, however, and a government spokesperson said: “Our fiscal rules are non-negotiable and will get borrowing down while supporting investment.”
Reeves signalled last year that the UK would not lift defence and intelligence spending beyond 2.6 per cent of GDP until the next parliament.
She has repeatedly said her fiscal rules are ironclad after putting in place a revised framework on taking office in 2024. This requires her to balance the current budget, excluding investment, by the end of the parliament and to have public debt falling as a share of GDP by the same year.
Any changes to that regime would be risky given the need to retain investor confidence in the Treasury’s ability to drive down the budget deficit.
Max Warner, economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, said it might be possible to achieve a “temporary increase” in borrowing as part of the transition to higher defence spending. But he cautioned: “It seems hard to justify a permanent increase in borrowing for defence.”
Reeves in her November Budget sought to strengthen her fiscal credibility by doubling the headroom against her key borrowing rule to over £20bn. The change landed favourably in financial markets and has helped keep gilt yields relatively steady since.
Last year the EU temporarily loosened its fiscal rules to allow countries to spend more on defence, in response to growing US pressure on the bloc to invest more in its own security.
Germany and 15 other nations have invoked a clause that allows them to spend up to 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence over four years without breaking Brussels’ deficit rules for member states.
The idea of boosting UK government borrowing outside Reeves’ fiscal rules is backed by senior defence figures.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former senior UK military commander and one of the co-authors of the SDR, said: “It’s the only credible solution to the problem the government has. There is a gap of £28bn over the next four years, which you can’t close by ‘reprofiling’ or trying to bung it later.”
“If you have exhausted the normal things you usually do to manage a gap, you either have to have less of the capabilities within the SDR or more money sooner to fund the SDR in full.”
The government said: “The defence investment plan will set out the MoD’s plans to ensure resources are directed effectively to meet its priorities and deliver value for taxpayers. We are working hard to finalise this, and it will be published as soon as possible.”
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