Boris Johnson is poised to abandon a key defence spending pledge because of soaring inflation, it emerged today as he flew to a crunch NATO summit.
The last Tory election manifesto promised to “continue to exceed the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence and increase the budget by at least 0.5% above inflation every year of the new Parliament”.
However, with inflation now rampant at 9.1% and tipped to hit 11% within months, the Prime Minister is set to ditch the pledge on spending 0.5% above inflation.
