Lord Dannatt has called on the Government to properly fund defence (Image: Getty)
The former head of the British Army has blasted Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s inability to properly fund the UK’s preparations for war. Lord Dannatt, who served as the Chief of the General Staff from 2006 to 2009, believes the UK needs to do more to rearm in order to counter and deter the threats from the country’s adversaries.
Laying out a series of threats facing the UK, the former senior officer raised concerns over the Chancellor’s ability to raise defence spending to the levels required to achieve the aims set out in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) last month. He said: “Whichever way one looks at the international situation today, it is volatile and potentially dangerous in the extreme. A vicious land war in Europe, intense conflicts in the Middle East now with Iran’s nuclear capability possibly having survived the much-vaunted obliteration, tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and President Xi of China pondering whether the time is right to swallow up Taiwan; all this paints a most threatening picture.
Lord Dannatt was in charge of the British Army from 2006 to 2009 (Image: Getty)
“And yet with sleight of hand, the Chancellor neuters Britain’s soft power by moving 0.2% of GDP from the Development budget to the Defence budget, finds just another 0.1% for Defence in her Spending Review and thinks the job is done.”
At last month’s NATO summit, the UK and other member states pledged to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 to meet what Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as an “era of radical uncertainty”.
The target replaces the previous target of 2%, a threshold that some member states are yet to reach, raising genuine concerns about their ability and motivation to more than double defence spending over the next decade.
Critics criticised the timeframe as being too long, with Lord Dannatt’s successor echoing claims by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Vladimir Putin could be ready and willing to attack a NATO state by 2030.
Others have pointed out that the allocation of 1.5% of the new defence spending target to “homeland security and national resilience” measures leaves too much scope for “creative accounting.”
The SDR gave 62 recommendations to modernise the Armed Forces (Image: Getty)
The disdain displayed by President Trump for NATO in the past has led many to question the reliability of the United States to come to the aid of a member state should it request to invoke Article 5. Lord Dannatt believes Europe must acknowledge the potential for the United States to take a lesser role in European security and plan accordingly.
He said: “We Europeans must look after ourselves, as far as he is concerned. European member states of Europe must step up to the bar in that last chance saloon and get real.
“For this country it means a decision now to commit to spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2034, or we risk a lingering war with Russia, hovering either side of the nuclear threshold.”
Labour’s EU deal slammed as young Europeans may stay over 12 months under scheme
The UK-Eu youth mobility scheme may allow for young people to extend their stay in Britain. (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir Starmer’s Brexit ‘reset’ deal could see under-30s extend their stay in Britain for longer than a year. A youth mobility scheme mirroring already existing ones would allow young people to move to the UK for over a year, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the EU relations minister, said. The programme would be similar to that of Britain’s existing deals with Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Under these youth schemes, under-30s can move to the UK for up to two years, with some exceptions allowing for that length of stay to be extended. Countries within the EU are now reportedly demanding for a scheme which allows for 18-30-year-olds to move to the UK for more than 12 months, despite home secretary Yvette Cooper pushing for a year cap. If the scheme lasted longer than one year, it would contribute to the UK’s immigration figures.
Nick Thomas-Symonds said the deal is open to negotiation. (Image: Getty)
In May, the prime minister met with EU leaders to reset relations with the aim of signing a new deal next year. The two agreed a rough outline of a youth mobility programme during these talks.
“These are all subjects for the negotiations,” Mr Thomas-Symonds told The Times, in response to being asked if the scheme will be limited to a year.
“I want to deliver the smart, controlled, balanced scheme that I agreed on in the common understanding.”
The minister emphasised that the programme will mirror the UK’s existing youth mobility deals with other countries, which, despite being capped, would be for more than 12 months.
Mr Thomas-Symonds said he was “not going to draw on a number” on the length of the new deal, but added the length of time would be “reciprocal” for Brits moving to EU countries.
“There’s 13 of them that already exist, and it’s in that context that we will be negotiating with the EU but the idea or suggestion that this is somehow freedom of movement is completely wrong,” he said. “Nobody says we have freedom of movement with Andorra or Uruguay, with whom we already have youth mobility schemes.”
Opposing political parties have condemned the scheme, labelling it as a “backdoor to free movement of people from the EU”.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice said at the time of the announcement: “This is not a government that can be trusted on Brexit. We cannot forget that this cabinet actively opposed Brexit and, in the case of Keir Starmer, actively campaigned to overturn the democratic decision of more than 17 million people.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has also criticised the youth programme for potentially leading to an “uncapped migration scheme”.
