The UK prime minister committed to a bump in the country’s budget for defence ahead of his meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House.
Warning of a “new era of insecurity” for Europe, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed to raising UK defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027 on Tuesday.
Starmer said his announcement amounted to the “biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War,” adding that it was necessary because “tyrants like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin only respond to strength.”
Starmer is set to meet with US President Donald Trump — who has long questioned the value of NATO and complained that the US provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight — at the White House on Thursday.
The UK currently spends 2.3% of its GDP on defence. While the government has made previous announcements regarding the 2.5% spending target, it has not issued a date.
Starmer told lawmakers that the increase amounts to an additional £13.4 billion (€16.6 billion) per year, adding that the goal is for defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP by 2035.
To fund the increase, Starmer stated that overseas development aid would be slashed from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income.
Starmer: ‘A new era we must meet’
The announcement comes as Europe has been scrambling to bolster its collective defence as Trump continues to shift US foreign policy, seemingly sidelining Europe as he looks for a quick plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The prime minister has offered to send British troops to Ukraine as part of a force to safeguard a ceasefire with Russia but has also said a US “backstop” would be needed to ensure a lasting peace.
Trump hasn’t committed to providing security guarantees for Ukraine, which continues to defend itself from Moscow’s full-scale invasion, now in its fourth year.
“We must stand by Ukraine, because if we do not achieve a lasting peace, then the economic instability and threats to our security, they will only grow,” Starmer said.
“And so as the nature of that conflict changes, as it has in recent weeks, it brings our response into sharper focus, a new era that we must meet as we have so often in the past, together, and with strength,” he added.
Meanwhile, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke out against Trump and his administration’s moves, likening the words from Washington to a “nightmare”.
“We are going through a nightmare at the moment of Orwellian language about what’s happening, victim blaming of a kind I have never seen in my life before,” Johnson said in Kyiv on Monday.
“To say that Ukraine started the war you might as well say that America provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it’s absolute rubbish and we need to call it out.”
The former UK leader called for the continent’s greater unity, stating that it is the only way to be seen as an actor on equal footing with the US and the rest.
“Unless European governments really get behind (Ukraine), the Trump administration is not going to take us seriously on this point,” Johnson concluded.
