{"id":6399,"date":"2026-07-06T22:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T22:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6399\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T22:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T22:56:27","slug":"starmer-heads-to-nato-summit-amid-questions-on-defence-spending-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/6399\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer heads to Nato summit amid questions on defence spending \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Keir Starmer will travel to Turkey on Tuesday for his final Nato summit amid questions about the UK\u2019s plans to increase defence spending.<\/p>\n

Downing Street said the Government remains committed to Nato\u2019s spending target, adding Sir Keir would make clear to allies that the UK\u2019s contribution to Nato \u201cwill not waver\u201d in the face of \u201ca new era of threat\u201d.<\/p>\n

Officials pointed to a \u00a315 billion boost to defence spending in last week\u2019s long-delayed defence investment plan (Dip), saying Sir Keir would use the summit to \u201cdemonstrate how we are turning these pledges into action\u201d.<\/p>\n

At home, the Government continues to face questions about whether the Dip is adequately funded and how the UK intends to reach the Nato target of spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2035.<\/p>\n

\"Edward<\/a>\"Pubs<\/a><\/p>\n

Agreed by allies at last year\u2019s summit in The Hague under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the target includes spending 3.5% of GDP on \u201ccore defence\u201d by 2035 and another 1.5% on \u201cresilience\u201d measures such as infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\"SirSir Keir Starmer could face a row with Donald Trump over defence spending after the US president insisted Nato allies were still not spending enough (Kin Cheung\/PA) <\/p>\n

Opposition figures have focused on how the Government intends to pay for the Dip, with the Treasury yet to set out funding for \u00a34.7 billion of the \u00a315 billion uplift announced last week.<\/p>\n

Commons Defence Committee chairman Tan Dhesi, a Labour MP, has also suggested Sir Keir will arrive at Nato \u201cempty-handed\u201d with no clear path to meeting the commitment to spend 3.5% of GDP on core defence.<\/p>\n

Ministers have insisted it is not unusual to wait for a budget to set out funding decisions while new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis told the Commons on Monday the Government would set out a \u201cclear trajectory\u201d to the 3.5% target at the next spending review.<\/p>\n

Mr Jarvis is expected to accompany Sir Keir to the Nato summit this week, along with Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the summit, Sir Keir\u2019s official spokesman said the UK had delivered \u201cthe biggest sustained boost to defence spending since the Cold War\u201d and was \u201ccommitted to the historic 5% Nato target set in 2035\u201d, with the Dip taking Britain to 4.2% already.<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis week\u2019s Nato summit comes less than two weeks before Andy Burnham is expected to take over as prime minister (Stefan Rousseau\/PA) <\/p>\n

Questions on spending are likely to dominate this year\u2019s Nato summit, which begins in the Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters ahead of the summit, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte demanded allies put forward \u201cclear, concrete and credible plans\u201d to reach the target.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump has renewed his assault on Nato allies over their defence budgets, claiming last week that the US was bankrolling other countries \u201cwithout getting any benefit\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the US president has repeatedly cast doubt on his commitment to the alliance, tensions over defence funding have been exacerbated by his desire to annexe Greenland \u2013 which belongs to fellow Nato member Denmark \u2013 and what Mr Trump sees as a lack of support from allies for his war against Iran.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir\u2019s official spokesman said the Government rejected Mr Trump\u2019s claims on spending, adding: \u201cThe UK has always met its Nato spending commitments and remains one of the top defence spenders in the alliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether Sir Keir was bracing for a confrontation with Mr Trump, the spokesman said the leaders would be sitting next to each other at Wednesday\u2019s North Atlantic Council meeting, adding: \u201cI expect their conversations to be constructive, as they always are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from questions about spending and the US commitment to the alliance, Downing Street said Sir Keir would spend the summit \u201cfocused on building a stronger and more European Nato than ever before\u201d that could support Ukraine and \u201cface the long-term threat posed by an increasingly reckless and dangerous Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

His spokesman pointed to \u201cescalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians\u201d and Russia\u2019s use of \u201ca medley of hybrid tactics to try to destabilise our societies\u201d, including a surge in cyber and information warfare along with threats at sea and in the air.<\/p>\n

The spokesman said the last two years had seen a 30% increase in Russian vessels threatening UK waters while Nato had scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian aircraft more than 700 times in the same period.<\/p>\n

\"F-35F-35 jets from HMS Prince of Wales intercepted a Russian patrol plane last week after it \u2018repeatedly approached\u2019 the UK\u2019s Carrier Strike Group currently deployed to the Arctic (Yui Mok\/PA) <\/p>\n

In a demonstration of heightened tensions, British F-35 jets intercepted a Russian patrol aircraft last week after it \u201crepeatedly approached\u201d the UK\u2019s Carrier Strike Group operating in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

The Ankara summit is likely to be Sir Keir\u2019s last appearance as Prime Minister at a major international event, coming less than two weeks before he is expected to hand power over to Andy Burnham.<\/p>\n

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to use a speech in London on Tuesday to argue that the impending transfer of power has turned Westminster into a \u201cpantomime\u201d at a time when \u201cBritain needs seriousness\u201d.<\/p>\n

She will say: \u201cWe are sending an outgoing Prime Minister who is now completely powerless to that Nato summit, and he is taking with him a defence investment plan which he knows is not fit for purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Government has already allowed Mr Burnham\u2019s team to hold \u201caccess talks\u201d with civil servants in preparation for power, but Downing Street declined to comment on whether he had been involved in pre-summit discussions.<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham has been urged to push for closer defence ties with Europe in the face of questions about America\u2019s commitment to Nato.<\/p>\n

Laura Chappell, of the think tank IPPR, said Britain could \u201cno longer build its security strategy around old assumptions about US reliability\u201d and should \u201clook beyond Washington and build stronger alliances closer to home\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Keir Starmer will travel to Turkey on Tuesday for his final Nato summit amid questions about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2068,52,57,58,7,50,457,71],"class_list":["post-6399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-dan-jarvis","tag-defence","tag-donald-trump","tag-keir-starmer","tag-nato","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399","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=6399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}