Before Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday, the prime minister thought it necessary to offer the president a gift. Britain’s defence spending will increase by 0.17 percentage points to 2.5% of GDP by April 2027, he told MPs in a hastily arranged Commons statement. The money, he added, would be taken directly from the overseas aid budget, whose level will be cut by nearly half to 0.3%.
The last measure is a remarkable turn for a Labour government. Uncomfortably, it comes at a time when Donald Trump wants to shut down perhaps the entire $40bn US aid budget – and at a stroke eliminates a signature commitment from the Blair-Brown years. It was back in 2004, when Tony Blair was prime minister, that Labour first committed to increasing aid spending to 0.7% of GDP.
