{"id":6066,"date":"2026-07-06T09:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6066\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T09:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:47:11","slug":"keir-starmer-braces-for-rough-nato-summit-as-trump-laments-uks-weak-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6066\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer Braces For Rough Nato Summit As Trump Laments UK’s ‘Weak Leaders’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"President<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump greets Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in October, 2025 via Associated Press<\/p>\n

Keir Starmer is preparing for a dressing down from Donald Trump at his last Nato summit as prime minister over the government\u2019s underwhelming defence spending plans.<\/p>\n

The PM will fly to Ankara in Turkey a week after unveiling the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan (DIP).<\/p>\n

Although it contained an extra \u00a315 billion for the armed forces over the next four years, nearly one-third of it is unfunded, while there was no pathway for how the government plans to hit its target of spending 3.5% of national income on defence by 2035.<\/p>\n

Starmer insisted that, once security spending is added, Britain will be spending 4.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence by then.<\/p>\n

But that would still fall short of Trump\u2019s demand that all Nato allies increase defence-related spending to 5% of GDP by the middle of the next decade.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s therefore no surprise that, judging by his social media posts, the US president may already sharpening his knives as he prepares to meet the outgoing prime minister.<\/p>\n

Trump reposted<\/a> a tweet on his platform, Truth Social, over the weekend which attacked England\u2019s supposed decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust 100 years ago, England was the greatest empire the world had ever seen,\u201d the post, from an account called Geiger Capital, read.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few generations later, they are a deindustrialized welfare zone unable to stop third-world men from invading on rubber boats.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecline happens fast. Weak leaders and suicidal empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same post also pointed out that Britain is on the cusp of appointing its seventh prime minister in a decade, with\u00a0Andy Burnham\u00a0preparing to replace Starmer in two weeks\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s dig comes after months of turmoil<\/a> in the UK-US relationship, triggered by Starmer\u2019s refusal to let American troops use British military base to launch attacks on Iran.<\/p>\n

Trump has already criticised<\/a> the incoming PM too, describing Burnham \u2013 the former mayor of Greater Manchester \u2013 as \u201cthe mayor of a town\u201d and \u201cextremely liberal\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker, has already hinted that the US president will be cracking the whip on his allies at the summit in Turkey this week.<\/p>\n

In a thinly-veiled threat, he said:\u00a0\u201cSome allies are doing more than others.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoland, the North countries, the Baltic countries lead the way and Germany is on track for the 5%, reaching it in 2029, but many allies are lagging behind and President Trump expects all allies to step up immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect all allies to demonstrate meaningful upward trajectories both quantitively and qualitatively in defence spending that results in fairer burden sharing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britain was Nato\u2019s third largest defence spender in 2015 after the US and Greece, but last year it slipped down to 12th.<\/p>\n

Burnham has vowed to \u201ctake my responsibilities fully\u201d to fund the DIP if he gets into office.<\/p>\n

Listen to Commons People, <\/a>the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week,\u00a0Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week\u2019s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what\u2019s going on at Westminster.<\/p>\n

Related…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump greets Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer in October, 2025 via Associated Press Keir Starmer is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1607,1647,57,58,287,210,2477],"class_list":["post-6066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-andy-burnham","tag-britain","tag-donald-trump","tag-keir-starmer","tag-nato-allies","tag-nato-summit","tag-prime-minister"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}