{"id":768286,"date":"2026-02-16T13:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/768286\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T13:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T13:21:14","slug":"britain-needs-to-go-faster-on-defence-spending-starmer-says-defence-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/768286\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain \u2018needs to go faster\u2019 on defence spending, Starmer says | Defence policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keir Starmer has said Britain \u201cneeds to go faster\u201d on defence spending, though any increase to military budgets in this parliament would probably not be as high as the \u00a315bn suggested in an overnight report.<\/p>\n

At a press conference in south-west London, the prime minister was asked to comment on a BBC report<\/a> that No 10 wanted to increase the defence budget to 3% of GDP by 2029.<\/p>\n

In reply, Starmer said the threat from Russia was obvious and likely to endure even if the fighting in Ukraine could be stopped. \u201cWe need to be alert to that, because that\u2019s going to affect every single person in this room, every single person in this country, so we need to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then emphasised \u201cthat means, on defence spending, we need to go faster,\u201d which was initially interpreted as a clear indication he sympathised with the 3% spending proposal, though the figure did not appear to have been signed off by the Treasury.<\/p>\n

Downing Street sources subsequently clarified that did not mean it was likely that defence spending would be raised to the 3% figure before the next election. It would be possible to \u201cgo faster\u201d using alternative methods, they added.<\/p>\n

A row has been going on for several weeks between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury over the financing of the Defence Investment Plan<\/a>, which was originally scheduled to be agreed last year but for which no publication date has been fixed.<\/p>\n

Defence spending is forecast to have amounted to 2.4% of GDP in 2025 and is scheduled to rise to 3.5% by 2035 in line with Nato targets. But currently most of the promised increases are planned for the next parliament.<\/p>\n

A plan to increase defence spending to 3% by 2029 would mean lifting the budget by about \u00a315bn in real terms several years earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer has said Britain \u201cneeds to go faster\u201d on defence spending, though any increase to military budgets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-768286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116080521204772824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}