The leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has written to the Prime Minister and the contenders to succeed him offering Conservative votes to cut welfare spending and redirect the savings into defence, telling Sir Keir Starmer it is time to get serious about funding the armed forces in the wake of the resignations of his Defence Secretary and Armed Forces Minister.
The letter, sent over the weekend and copied to a string of senior Labour figures including Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting, Al Carns, Catherine West, Darren Jones and Ed Miliband, requests an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss defence funding and renews a standing Conservative offer to help the government push welfare reform through the Commons.
The mechanics of that offer are worth setting out, since an opposition party cannot set the government’s budget or move money between departments, something only ministers can do. What Badenoch is offering instead is Conservative votes in the division lobbies. Her argument rests on the parliamentary arithmetic exposed last summer, when Starmer’s own attempt at welfare reform was defeated by a rebellion on the Labour benches.
The premise is that the Prime Minister cannot pass meaningful cuts to the benefits bill relying on his own MPs, and that Conservative support could supply a majority for measures his backbenchers would otherwise sink. “Since the Parliamentary defeat of your modest attempt at welfare reform in the summer of last year, it is obvious that your left-wing MPs will not support any real attempt to cut the welfare bills,” she writes. “Therefore the support of the Conservatives will be critical to delivering substantive reforms that will reduce the benefits bill.” It is an offer of votes rather than money, and one that would require the government to bring forward welfare cuts of the kind the Conservatives favour in order to take it up.
Badenoch places the intervention around the events of the past week, in which both the Defence Secretary John Healey and the Armed Forces Minister Al Carns resigned over the funding behind the Defence Investment Plan. In her letter, she tells Starmer that “today’s world is more dangerous and threatening than we have known in our lifetimes”, and that “in the space of 12 hours your Defence Secretary, Armed Forces Minister and two key Defence Department aides resigned from your Government”. She quotes Healey’s warning that intelligence assessments point to a possible Russian attack on NATO “as soon as 2030”, and tells the Prime Minister that “the first duty of every Government must be to protect our security”, a duty she says Healey has set out the government’s failure to discharge.
The Conservative leader sets the two departed ministers’ own words against the government’s account. She notes that in a Friday interview Starmer said he had made “hard-edged decisions” on defence spending, and places that against Healey’s verdict that the funding falls “well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time” and would reduce “the readiness of our Forces” while increasing “the risk to personnel on operations”. These, she writes, are “very serious criticisms, perhaps the most serious that could be made of any prime minister, especially in the context of the risk of a Russian attack on NATO”.
She also raises the Prime Minister’s own account at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, where he told Parliament the delayed plan would be published in “just a few weeks time” and that his ministers “have been working through the details to make sure that we get this right”. That assurance, Badenoch writes, sits against Carns having told the Prime Minister he “had no hand in the Defence Investment Plan”, that it is “not built for the threat we face” and is not “transformative enough”. She returns to the funding gap, recalling that she had asked Starmer about the reported £15 billion shortfall between what the Treasury was offering and what military leaders argue is the minimum required, and that he had replied his government was “investing in this great nation” and had “increased defence spending”, while Carns has said the investment on offer is “inadequate to the task” and that “commanders will be asked to do more with less”.
Badenoch argues defence spending must rise to three per cent of GDP, and says the Conservatives have set out how to find the money, including by reinstating the two-child benefit cap and creating what she calls a sovereign defence fund. “It is time to get serious,” she writes. “We cannot have our military inadequately funded at a time of growing threats,” adding that the funding “must also not be backloaded, when the pressures are urgent”, an echo of Healey’s own complaint about the shape of the settlement.
The letter closes with a set of specific requests, including that the Defence Investment Plan be published as soon as possible, that her shadow Defence Secretary work with the new Defence Secretary to address what she calls the plan’s shortcomings, and that her shadow Defence Secretary and shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office be briefed urgently on Privy Council terms about both the contents of the plan and the risk of a Russian attack on NATO within four years. She frames the offer as being made “in the national interest given the overwhelming imperative of defending our country”.
Badenoch’s case leans on figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility showing welfare spending up £19.8 billion on last year and set to reach £210 billion by the end of this Parliament, and on a growing body of senior voices making a similar argument. Lord Robertson, co-author of the government’s own Strategic Defence Review, has warned that Britain cannot defend itself “with an ever-expanding welfare budget”, while the former Labour prime minister Sir Tony Blair has questioned how the government can justify “adding to the welfare bill when it is already ballooning, taxes are high and getting higher, and we’re told we have to increase defence spending to prepare for the possibility of war”.
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He’ll see it as a trap, but if he means what he says on defence, he needs to take up the iffer.
Is she prepared to vote on cancelling the triple lock, me thinks not.
Nobody on this forum needs convincing that Britain’s defence spending must increase significantly. We’ve been callibg for it for over a decade.
The warnings have been coming for years from serving military officers, former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, ex-generals, former Defence Secretaries, defence analysts, NATO allies and Members of Parliament from all sides. The consensus is clear. Britain faces the most dangerous security environment since the Cold War, yet our Armed Forces have been asked to do more with less for decades. The debate is no longer whether defence spending should increase. The debate is whether the Government has the political will to increase it to the level required. Around 2.56% of GDP is simply not enough if Britain is serious about deterring Russia, protecting NATO’s eastern flank, defending our overseas territories, rebuilding stockpiles, modernising equipment and protecting critical national infrastructure. Russia does not need to launch an overt conventional attack on Britain to cause immense damage. Our economy and daily lives depend upon undersea communications cables, energy pipelines, data networks, satellites and power infrastructure. Any future conflict will be fought across multiple domains, land, sea, air, cyber and space. The threats are real and they are growing.
Something has to give. Its either Starmer doing what’s required, or he resigns and the government falls! Either the Prime Minister instructs the Treasury to properly fund the Defence Investment Plan and move rapidly towards at least 3.5% of GDP on defence, or he accepts that Britain’s military capability will continue to decline relative to the threats we face. The Treasury’s job is to balance the books. The Prime Minister’s first duty is the defence of the nation. When those two priorities collide, national security must come first.
Badenoch’s offer of Conservative votes to support welfare reforms in exchange for increased defence spending highlights the reality facing the Government. There is no shortage of people identifying the problem. There is no shortage of solutions being proposed. What is lacking is the political courage to make difficult decisions? Instead, it’s increase benefits at the risk of a calamity should our forces have to fight. Realistically, how long will 134 Typhoons, 15 fighting ships, one fighting brigade and 148 tanks last in a war with a military the size of Russia’s who are rearing with modern equipment as we speak?
The resignations and public criticisms from senior defence figures should be setting alarm bells ringing throughout Westminster. When Defence Secretaries, Armed Forces Ministers and military leaders warn that funding is inadequate, commanders are being asked to do more with less, and readiness is being reduced, those warnings should not be dismissed as departmental lobbying. They should be treated as matters of national importance. Every government has choices. It can spend more on welfare, more on public services, more on debt interest, or more on defence. It cannot spend the same pound twice. The question now is simple. Does Britain intend to remain a serious military power capable of defending itself and fulfilling its NATO commitments, or does it continue hoping that deteriorating global security will somehow resolve itself?
Hope has never been a defence policy.