Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting and ensuing statement in Parliament was the culmination of weeks of groundwork by Keir Starmer, which had started at another six-hour Cabinet meeting at Lancaster House on 7 February. The plan to slash aid spending was finished by a tight-knit group of advisers last weekend, but Starmer had already set a trail of crumbs for keen observers.
Starmer was also facing a confluence of pressures. The Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), led by Lord George Robertson, a former Labour Defence Secretary and Secretary General of Nato, is expected to report an assessment of the UK’s strategic interests and requisite military requirements in the next few weeks.
“You can’t get away from the fact that Trump’s interventions have firmed up thinking at the top of government about defence spending. But actually, the Prime Minister has spent a lot of time and energy both in opposition and recent weeks thinking about how to properly finance the SDSR and make sure domestic industries benefit from the change in priorities” a No10 source told The i Paper.
There’s no doubt Starmer has been on a political journey. Only five years ago he said the free movement of people is one of the better reasons for European Union membership, a key argument Tony Blair used to make. On Tuesday, at a stroke Starmer wiped out that signature Blairite commitment to increasing aid spending to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income. He also broke a pledge in the party’s 2024 manifesto.
But Labour MPs widely believe that the ramping up of military spending will have to be funded by cuts across departments, including slashing the welfare bill in order to protect ringfenced areas such as the NHS.
Starmer slightly redeemed himself in Labour MPs’ eyes at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday by flattening Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch. Again.
Europe is in a flap over this 'black swan' event
Read More“I’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all. I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself… saviour of western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance,” he replied. Hard to come back from that.
But Starmer has also made it clear he got no pleasure from slashing the aid budget. He’s a keen enough student of world affairs to know that China is winning the race for soft power, particularly in the global south.
One proposal is a “rearmament bank” to tap into European savings; by leveraging national guarantees, a bank would allow countries to boost spending without increasing their balance sheets upfront. Another is a suggestion from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to briefly lift the EU’s fiscal rules to allow countries to borrow more to increase defence spending without affecting their budgets.
Starmer flies to Washington on Wednesday afternoon for perhaps the definitive meeting of his premiership with Trump and with praise from US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in his back pocket.
Starmer is one of the last centre-left politicians left standing in Europe. Whether his shift to the right can tame Trump is an immediate concern. Whether he can rely on the support of his Labour Party when he gets back is another question entirely.
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