The highest priority for Keir Starmer before grudgingly handing over to Andy Burnham—expected around 20 July, should Burnham be elected unopposed—was to publish the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara on 7–8 July. This was the issue over which John Healey resigned on 11 June, to be replaced by Dan Jarvis.
Immediately after Labour’s victory in July 2024, Starmer commissioned the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) to lay out spending priorities for his anticipated two terms in office. The haste reflected pressure from the heads of the armed forces over what they saw as repeated failures by a succession of Tory prime ministers to respond to shifts in the global balance of power.
The SDR set a path to 2.5% of GDP by 2027—2.6% once the intelligence agencies were reclassified as defence spending—rising to 3% in the next parliament and 3.5% by 2035. Although the DIP was supposed to be published in December, Starmer delayed it when it became clear that, with Rachel Reeves insisting on her ‘fiscal rules’, there would be a £28bn shortfall in the defence budget. A revised plan was to be adopted in March; by then, much had changed. At the Munich Security Conference in February, the possibility of joint European funding of some armaments programmes had been raised as a way of cutting costs and standardising equipment. The EU had also opened the prospect of financing ‘defence’ outside its fiscal rules. Above all, on top of demanding higher European spending, Trump and Netanyahu had launched their war on Iran without consultation. Clearly, every state would have to take account of all this.
A further delay allowed closer collaboration with European allies over a possible ‘European Defence Mechanism’—some kind of centralised body to oversee and coordinate procurement and financing. Not only did Starmer and Reeves see this as a way forward; reportedly it also had the backing of Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank. All of which makes clear that the talk of the government’s priority being to ‘defend our shores’ and protect ‘these islands’ is strictly for Daily Mail readers. As the first capitalist imperial power, Britain’s ruling class knows its wealth is drawn from across the globe—and that is what it means to defend.
Far from ‘these shores’, its military has most recently fought the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, and its overseas bases have been used to facilitate genocide in Gaza and to launch unprovoked attacks on Iran. The last time the army was turned on people in these islands, it was to suppress the civil rights and nationalist movements in Ireland.
Contradictions at home
Despite the overriding common interest in safeguarding their global exploitation, there are inevitably divergent interests within the ruling class. At one level this simply reflects the character of that class—each capital committed to maximising its own profit, if necessary at the expense of others. Given the secrecy surrounding weapons development and the limited number of firms involved, ‘defence’ spending is also wide open to abuse. A recent National Audit Office report found an overall loss to the state of some £14.5 billion on a scheme in which military housing was sold to the property company Annington in 1996, then leased back at £230 million a year by 2024 and, eventually, bought back for £6 billion in December 2024.
A much more fundamental contradiction lies behind the constant demands for increased spending on ‘defence’ at the expense of ‘welfare’. For decades, the dominant policy has been the rolling back of the concessions the capitalist class was forced to make in the aftermath of the second world war. The long-term effect of privatisation, budget cuts, restrictions on local government, the outsourcing of services and, centrally, the outlawing of effective trade union action has so reduced working-class incomes that they often no longer cover the costs of reproducing the class. That is what lies behind increased spending on, for example, housing benefit, pension credit, universal credit or personal independence payments. This long-term trend was reinforced after Labour spent billions bailing out the banks following the 2008 financial crash, and then by a succession of Tory governments obsessed with cutting ‘government spending’.
Enraged that this now applied to the armed forces too, and appalled at the political disintegration of their historically preferred party, the leading figures of the general staff and their allies turned to the inevitable alternative: Labour. Well aware of the party’s background and the likely obstacles to diverting funds from welfare to warfare, they first convinced Keir Starmer—a fairly reliable former Director of Public Prosecutions—of the need for the Strategic Defence Review. The name alone implied a major change of direction.
At the same time, presumably coincidentally, Colonel Alistair Scott Carns of the Special Boat Service resigned his commission and, although a former Conservative voter, joined the Labour Party and put himself forward as a parliamentary candidate in Birmingham Selly Oak. His candidacy was immediately approved by the appropriate party committee, headed up by Josh Simons, a director of Labour Together and Labour’s candidate—soon MP—for Makerfield. The military top brass were right to think Labour would face opposition in prioritising ‘defence’ over other public spending, but probably thought it would come from the party’s membership, not from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.
Her refusal to meet John Healey’s demand for extra spending was not aimed at appeasing Labour’s membership, however, but at reassuring the ‘markets’ that nothing would be allowed to infringe her ‘fiscal rules’. Those rules forbid any borrowing to finance current government spending—the main targets being education, health and welfare.
Applying that to the arms budget too was more than Healey would accept, so he resigned, along with a certain Al Carns, who on election in Selly Oak had been handed a defence ministry post and, from September 2025, the job of Minister for the Armed Forces. His place was taken by Dan Jarvis, previously Major Dan Jarvis of the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, who seemed to fit in quite well. Given the circumstances, he will be well placed to insist on some increase in arms spending—possibly by categorising it as investment rather than current spending.
As this issue went to press, the government had published its long-delayed Defence Investment Plan on 30 June—an extra £15 billion over four years, bringing planned spending to £298 billion and lifting defence to 2.7% of GDP by 2027. But the underlying conflict—warfare funded at the expense of welfare—is nowhere near resolved, and it is Andy Burnham who will inherit it. He will be keen to prove his reliability both to the markets—people so wealthy they can not only lend to government but dictate the interest paid—and to the service chiefs demanding big spending increases.
The task for socialists is to mobilise and organise against further cuts to social services. Not a penny for ‘defence’—restore past cuts, wage rises to match inflation, repeal the anti-union laws!