Sorry, President Trump! UK Will Backtrack on Boosting Defence Spending, Even to Lower 2.5 Per Cent Level: Report

The British government simply can’t afford to fund its military to the NATO standard demanded by alliance leader America due to its dwindling economy, it is claimed.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in a bid to reverse the situation where Washington massively subsidises the defence of NATO member states while Europe gets a free ride, has recently told the alliance they need to increase their members’ annual military spending to five per cent of GDP. This is double the target President Trump and the alliance were previously advocating at 2.5 per cent, itself a meaningful increase from the two per cent the alliance had been trying to persuade its members to hit for years.

Even now, several major economies in NATO are well behind the decade-old remedial minimum of two per cent, with Spain being the worst offender at less than 1.3 per cent of their economy spent on defence. Trump has recently threatened Spain with tariffs if it doesn’t meet its obligations to NATO.

The United Kingdom has long been one of NATO’s best performers in terms of defence spending, part of the second-tier of members behind the United States, even if this distinction is from a very low bar. Yet the British government’s previous promises to hit 2.5 per cent soon, never mind President Trump’s ambitions to make Europe a credible deterrent to Russia without totally relying on America, appear to be on the verge of being broken.

British newspaper of record, The Times of London, cites an unnamed government source who says the state simply can’t afford it, as it has other spending priorities. This person is claimed to have told the paper: “If we try to hit the target by 2030 it will mean deeper cuts to public services in the run-up to the election. It feels like a non-starter.”

The same newspaper noted Monday morning that the UK is facing an economic downturn. This is a “setback to the government’s growth plans,” they said, somewhat generously, given that many would dispute that repeated tax hikes and punishment of the nation’s wealthier residents constitute a growth plan at all.

The six-month-old Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer is presently undertaking a defence spending strategic review, a byword in British politics for the repeated investigations into how to cut defence capabilities to save money that has periodically occurred since the end of the Second World War. Yet, all the rhetoric surrounding the threat of Russia that emanates constantly from London does not appear to have shifted the government away from its defence-cutting ways.

The paper further quotes a military source who said of the attitude from the government: “The Treasury is putting its fingers in its ears again, saying it has to be 2.3 per cent, maybe it can be 2.5 per cent in the distant future. But that is going to lead to some very bad headlines about cuts to the military at a time of war in Europe”. The Times says the government did not meaningfully confirm or deny anything when confronted with these assertions.

The matter of spending priorities — whether on cash for welfare or defence and deterrence wins — has been a matter of emphasis for the NATO leadership this past year, with top officials in the alliance repeatedly making clear that members will likely have to sacrifice some creature comforts to guarantee the nation-state.

NATO’s Admiral Rob Bauer said last year: “If you ramp up your deterrence and if you ramp up support to Ukraine, there will be less money to spend on other things. It will take away some of our luxuries, it will require sacrifice.”

Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in December: “I know spending more on defence means spending less on other priorities. But it is only a little less. On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of their national income on pensions, health and social security systems. We need a small fraction of that money to make our defences much stronger, and to preserve our way of life.”

Prime Minister Sir Keir and President Trump spoke for the first time since the inauguration on Sunday. While the 45-minute conversation was said to be cordial, the official readouts from the talk suggest they managed to avoid talking about the most contentious issues, including defence spending, the Ukraine war, and Starmer’s ambitions to give away the land underneath an important American military base.

The leaders vowed to meet for further talks soon.