IN 1962, Dean Acheson, a former US Secretary of State, in a speech at the American military academy West Point, summed up Britain’s dilemma with remarkable perspicacity.
“Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.”
There was a furious reaction in Britain, because his remark was so obviously true it hit home.
And if the current tussle in the British government about defence expenditure is anything to go by, Acheson’s observation still remains true.
Starmer told the cabinet (it used to be ‘his’ cabinet) on Tuesday that what used to be his government would be taking no more major decisions that had financial consequences except for the Defence Investment Plan, which had caused his former Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister to resign.
Apparently he wants raising the defence budget towards 2.5% of GDP by 2027, the biggest rise since the end of the Cold War, to be part of his legacy.
Both the MoD and, naturally, the military, think it falls short by about £15 billion. They wanted £28bn but Starmer is sticking at £13bn.
It may be one of the elements in Starmer’s legacy but if it is, it’s one which exhibits his weakness, timidity and failure to address Britain’s continuing delusions of grandeur, which Starmer’s premiership demonstrated in spades.
People are already saying that while he failed on domestic policy, he was a success on ‘the world stage’. He wasn’t.
It’s true he spent a lot of time abroad, especially in his first six months as prime minister – 26 trips.
He’s travelled to Washington, Paris and Brussels and to G7 meetings obsequious as a needy hanger-on, all in his futile quest to show that Britain is a ‘world leader’.
It’s not. It’s a medium-sized European country whose governments have never come to terms with their comedown from imperial power.
Britain is a medium-sized European country whose governments have never come to terms with their comedown from imperial power (Henry Nicholls/PA)
That’s what Starmer, like so many British prime ministers before him, failed to address. That’s what the wrangle about defence spending is about.
Partly, that’s what Brexit was about. All that waffle from Johnson and his gang about ‘global Britain’. Everything was ‘world class’.
Starmer adopted a lot of that waffle with his union flag always behind him and rabbiting on about ‘British values’.
In June 2025, Starmer published the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which he said was the first of its kind.
It wasn’t. It was the fourth in five years and wasn’t ‘root and branch’ as he claimed.
In fact it only watered down the bonkers stuff in the Conservative government’s 2021 review, which talked about an “Indo-Pacific tilt” away from Europe. Come onnn…
Starmer’s SDR proposed buying F35A jets costing billions and capable of carrying nuclear bombs and missiles, building armament factories, and acquiring more frigates and destroyers.
It identified “a deadly quartet of nations: Iran, North Korea, Russia and China”. The then Defence Secretary said they were “an active alliance of aggression from autocrats”.
Do these hyperbolic descriptions justify rearmament? Russia can’t beat Ukraine after four years.
There’ll be no war between Britain and China, North Korea or Iran that Britain does not choose to enter – or which the US doesn’t choose for it.
A lot of the wildly expensive equipment the SDR proposes to buy is not defensive, but expeditionary. The SDR and the proposed Defence Investment Plan ask the wrong questions.
HMS Vigilant, one of Britain’s four nuclear-armed submarines (Danny Lawson/PA)
It should be what does a medium-sized European country need to defend itself?
Instead, Starmer talks about leading his fictional ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend Ukraine or leading a NATO exercise in the Arctic.
Even some of the military have criticised the gap between rhetoric and reality.
Britain has 71,000 troops. Starmer would station 10% of them as an ill-equipped peacekeeping force if there’s a truce between Ukraine and Russia.
Starmer has taken money from every government department to pay for this performative extravaganza and has decimated foreign aid so the boys can have toys to fire and fly.
Why does it matter to anyone here? To give her her due, the only local politician who has pointed out the consequences is Michelle O’Neill. As she said, it’s a choice between warfare and welfare.
Britain has the lowest benefit and welfare payments in Europe. Starmer and some in his cabinet want to cut them further to pay for weaponry. Incredibly, a large part of what Starmer chose to do was to please Trump.
He could have taken a leaf out of Pedro Sanchez’s book, who told Trump that Spain isn’t about to be attacked so there’ll be no increase in defence spending.
Exactly the same is true of Britain, but Starmer and many in his government can’t bear to admit Britain’s diminished role in the world.
They prefer to impoverish Britain to pretend it’s a world leader.
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