UK faces danger, former NATO chief criticizes Starmer
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Photo: Getty Images)
Lord George Robertson, former Secretary General of NATO and author of the government's Strategic Defense Review (SDR), has accused UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer of corrosive complacency regarding the country's defense, reports the Financial Times.
Britain is under threat
In a speech he will deliver on Tuesday in Salisbury, Robertson will state that the war in Iran should serve as a sharp wake-up call.
"We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe . . . Britain's national security and safety is in peril," he will warn.
Financial gap
According to officials, the funding shortfall for existing defense plans over the next four years is about £28 billion — even without taking into account the ambitions of the strategic review.
The Ministry of Defense, the Treasury, and Downing Street have been unable to agree on a 10-year Defense Investment Plan (DIP) for several months, which was supposed to be published last autumn.
Robertson will stress that Chancellor Rachel Reeves devoted only 40 words to defense in over an hour during last year's budget speech, and in the March spring budget statement, not a single word.
Example – the war in Iran
Robertson will cite the example of Britain's inability to deploy more than one warship in the Mediterranean Sea during the first two weeks of the war in Iran this spring.
He will warn that the country is facing not only a shortage of equipment but also crises in logistics, engineering, cybersecurity, ammunition, training, and medical resources.
Government response
A government spokesperson said that the cabinet is implementing the Strategic Defense Review, and that defense spending is experiencing the largest long-term increase since the Cold War – over £270 billion in investments. However, he acknowledged that the DIP plan has not yet been finalized.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that the issue of Ukraine's membership in the Alliance is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon due to a lack of a unified political position among the allies.
For his part, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares Bueno emphasized that the Strait of Hormuz is not within NATO's area of responsibility, so the Alliance does not plan to intervene in military operations in the Middle East.
