Keir Starmer’s apparent embrace of a ‘Britain First’ agenda is nothing more than faux posturing.
He says he is going to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP – but not before 2027. If he believes our defences are inadequate, waiting would be in gross dereliction of duty.
This is the second time he has misled the people over defence. To get elected, he had already promised to increase spending on the military. Once in No. 10, he kicked that promise into the long grass and instead set up a “strategic defence review”.
The title sounds good, but all it serves to do is delay and procrastinate. The fact is the United Kingdom’s military is a shadow of its former self. It would barely fill Wembley stadium. Starmer is just another PM in a long line of PMs who have neglected our security.
There are at least two other glaring falsities at the heart of Starmer’s declaration in favour of our security. First, he is not controlling our borders. The UK can never be made secure while he fails in this most fundamental of obligations. There are an estimated 1.2 million illegal migrants in the UK and tens of thousands more arrive each year. The threat from these people, about whom we know nothing, is not theoretical.
There are already many examples of our society being assaulted by illegal migrants. How is it that Starmer can find billions to send to Ukraine to defend their borders but not our own?
What good is an outwardly facing military if we are assaulted from within by people who should have been kept out? And it is not just illegal migrants that pose a threat.
Second, we are practising a policy of mass legal migration. The millions coming to our country are burdening our public services, breaking our economy, and setting aside our cultural integrity.
The UK can never be made secure while the Prime Minister fails in this most fundamental of obligations, writes Ben Habib
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Our constitutional and economic security is being wilfully set aside. No amount of defence spending can make up for that.
Coming back to the situation in Europe, Starmer has smelt political opportunity with the split between Zelensky and Trump.
He is hoping to use it to place himself at the centre of negotiations, rescue his otherwise waning political capital and do what he has always wanted to – get into bed with the EU. None of this has anything to do with our security.
Indeed, he is heading in a deeply dangerous direction with the suggestion that British troops may be deployed in Ukraine as a peacekeeping force.
This would be NATO membership for Ukraine through the backdoor. Assuming such a deployment took place, any subsequent hostilities between Russia and Ukraine could very quickly escalate into a European war. This would be at a time when we are not prepared for such a thing.
Starmer is a full-on Europhile. As recently as September 2023, he said he would so closely align us with the EU that we would be members in all but name.
His idea of defending the UK is to join the European Defence Union. Like all things EU, this is not the coming together of European nations to cooperate but the handing over of control by these states to Brussels.
When Starmer talks about working with our European partners to step into the breach created by a vacating USA, he means working for Brussels.
Unknown perhaps to many, including some of the biggest voices for Brexit, is that Johnson’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU signed the UK into the European Defence Fund – an EU defence programme aimed at military interoperability. We are paying millions into this fund each year. We are already close to signing ourselves into various aspects of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation or PESCO – their alternative to NATO.
If Starmer has his way with our already beleaguered armed forces, they will be put in harm’s way, unprepared, taking instructions from Brussels and risking a European war with Russia.
The only sensible thing for Starmer to be doing right now is immediately increasing our military spend to at least three per cent of GDP to ensure we are once again a world beating force.
Unless and until that objective is met, he should not be taking any more risks with our security. Under no circumstances should he be signing us into an EU military controlled by Brussels.
Far from being concerned about our security, the truth is Starmer will do anything to advance his desire to embed the UK in the EU. Even if it risks landing an unprepared UK into a European war.