When it comes to the defence budget, enormous pressure is being put on Sir Keir Starmer to do something he already intends to do. As a Nato member, Britain has signed up to a target of military spending at 2.5% of gross domestic product. The prime minister has made a “cast-iron” guarantee to honour that pledge, and restated it ahead of a Nato summit in Washington this week.
This was also the policy of the last Conservative government. There was no timetable for reaching the target until April this year, when Rishi Sunak declared that it would happen by 2030. Within a month, Mr Sunak had called an election. Those two things are related. The 2030 deadline was a partisan device to make the Tories look more hawkish than Labour.
