Prime minister to launch strategic defence review in Glasgow this morning
Starmer repeats his claim that he has an ambition to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP in the next parliament.
Q: But “ambition” is not a commitment. I can have a commitment to lose weight. That does not mean it will happen.
What you can take from this is, yes, that 3% but I am not, as the prime minister of a Labour government, going to make a commitment as to the precise date until I can be sure precisely where the money is coming from, how we can make good on that commitment, because I don’t believe in performative fantasy politics, and certainly not on defence and security.
Nato has been the single most effective alliance for keeping the peace for 80 years, and our job is not just to celebrate that as we do, but to ask ourselves the searching question as I ask myself on a daily basis, which is, how do we ensure that Nato preserves the peace for decades to come for this generation?
