Britain Tuesday announced a landmark increase in military spending, seeking to send a powerful signal about burden sharing to President Trump before PM Keir Starmer meets him at the White House on Thursday.
Starmer said Britain would raise its military spending to 2.5% of economic output by 2027, and to 3% during the next govt’s term, which would mean by 2034 at the latest. Britain, he said, would pay for the massive new expenditure by scaling back by 40% spending on overseas development aid. The Labour govt had already promised to raise expenditure to 2.5% of GDP, from a current level of 2.3%, but it had not given a date by which it would do so. The move would amount to an increase in expenditure of £13.4 billion ($17 billion) a year on defence between now and 2027.
“We must change our national security posture because a generational challenge demands a generational response,” Starmer said in a statement to Parliament. Starmer said the govt would cut overseas development aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%, adding that he regretted the reduction. “At times like this, the defence and security of the British people must always come first,” the PM said.
The govt’s aid cutback, which came on top of a previous cut under a Conservative PM, Boris Johnson, in 2020, echoes the Trump administration’s drastic retreat fromforeign aid. But Starmer presented his decision as a temporary measure necessitated by the challenging new security environment.