The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th February 2025
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th February 2025
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says he’s going to increase military spending and it’s going to be funded by cuts in the foreign aid budget. Announcing the “biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War” Starmer said the arms budget is to rise to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) within two years, an increase of more than £13 billion per year from the present figure of 2.3 per cent, and remain at that level until the end of this parliament. The Labour government will then aim to spend a full three per cent of GDP on war in the next parliament, a further rise of more than £30 billion per year.
The plan, announced in Parliament on the eve of Starmer’s talks with Donald Trump in Washington, is clearly an attempt to appease the Americans who want all their NATO allies to up their defence expenditure to boost US arms exports and to enable the Americans to cut costs by reducing their own military presence in Europe. But it’s provoked an angry response from the left and the anti-war movement as yet another broken promise.
Labour’s 2024 election manifesto said the party was “committed to restoring development spending at the level of 0.7 per cent of gross national income as soon as fiscal circumstances allow” – a pledge the Government will now find well-nigh impossible to fulfil.
“The government has announced it will pay for more weapons and bombs by cutting support for the world’s poorest people. A deplorable decision that will only create a more unstable and unequal world
What is the government doing to bring about peace?” was how Jeremy Corbyn put it. The former Labour leader who now heads the Independent Alliance in the House of Commons said that “since Labour took office, 10,000 more children have been plunged into poverty by the refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Increasing military spending while millions of children go hungry is not a tough decision. It’s the wrong decision.”
Lyndsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War movement, said the defence hike “will take the money from overseas development budgets, consigning some of the poorest people in the world to become even poorer. But no worry – Britain will develop more arms and more weapons to facilitate the increasing wars taking place throughout the world.
“There is something grotesquely awful about a Labour government denying the WASPI women around £10 billion in one off compensation but then immediately committing to £13 billion a year for this increased spending. Starmer lauded the previous generations who have fought in wars but is prepared for them to be cold and hungry to promote his imperial ambitions.
“This decision will make the threat of war more likely. It will tie the ailing British economy even more to military production (and indeed to US arms companies) with the consequent threats to public spending in other areas. The claim that it will help British jobs is one that no one should be fooled by. Any big increase in spending – on housing and health for example – would have the same effect. Many of the jobs in ‘defence’ are in the US and elsewhere. As number of studies have shown, defence expenditure is one of the least efficient ways of creating jobs.
“The unions who welcome this are deluding themselves: it will do little for their members in those industries and will worsen the social security of housing, health and education that millions of workers in this country desperately need.”
Sophie Bolt, the new general secretary of CND, said much the same. “These increases are to fund a reckless war drive that risks plunging Europe into decades-long confrontation with Russia, whilst ratcheting up nuclear tensions globally…whilst it is presented as defending Ukraine, this NATO war drive is global. We know that Trump’s ‘America First’ policies are still about maintaining US dominance over the rest of the world. From calls to seize Greenland, Canada and Panama, to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, Trump has no respect for sovereignty, human rights and international law. His plans to expand the US Missile Defence System, or ‘the Iron Dome for America’, would enable the Trump administration to use its nuclear weapons without fear of a retaliatory strike. British bases already play a central role in this ‘Iron Dome for America’, making us a target in any global confrontation, yet offering no protection. This is a very chilling prospect.
“Instead of vying for Trump’s approval over which NATO state can increase its military spending highest, Britain and Europe should instead be using this opportunity to reshape the region’s security approach, towards one that is genuinely sustainable and secure. This means Britain ending its military and nuclear alliance with the US. A first step in this would be to scrap the replacement of Britain’s nuclear weapons system. With the government’s own watchdog concluding that the replacement is ‘unachievable’, Rachel Reeves should cut her losses and direct the hundreds of billions into rebuilding crumbling public services and investing in sustainable energy sources.”