Published by The Telegraph (12th January, 2026)
The planet has become a more dangerous and disorderly place as a ruthless new world order reliant on raw power emerges. The US superpower behaves like a rogue nation as it decapitates the leadership of a Latin American country to grab its oil and threatens other nations. Expansionist Russia is on the rampage. China spreads its toxic tentacles around the planet. Europe seems paralysed by infighting. And there is declining faith in Nato’s protective shield for our continent.
No wonder all parties – apart from the Greens with their student politics – support a rise in defence spending. This should be a political imperative, given the clear and present dangers. We can no longer count on Washington as a reliable ally. Russia is not just slaughtering Ukrainians but engaged in shadow warfare across Europe. Our spooks warn about China’s cyberattacks and spies. And do not be deluded: we will not revert to those post-war certainties whenever Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping leave the stage.
Yet complacency reigns supreme in Westminster despite the shredding of Britain’s military forces in recent decades. The army has almost halved in size over the course of my adult life. One former Nato commander in Europe warned five years ago that its inventory ran out after just eight days in a war simulation. A parliamentary report last year admitted Britain is unprepared to defend itself. Meanwhile, the £6.3bn Ajax armoured vehicle fiasco is just the latest humiliating defence procurement bungle.
Last year’s Strategic Defence Review recognised the scale of challenge, declaring Britain must move decisively to “warfighting readiness”. Several European nations are preparing for possible conflict. Now the prime minister is talking – rightly in my view – of sending troops from our shrunken army to maintain a ceasefire in Ukraine. Yet defence chiefs have warned him of a gaping black hole in defence spending that could lead to further cuts in their diminished forces.
Some Nato nations have more than doubled defence spending as a share of GDP over the past decade. Yet while we hear bold talk emerge from the Downing Street bunker, it is moving with the speed of a sluggish snail as Britain slides from third to 12th place in the Nato spending table. Defence spending is nudging up from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent by 2027, backed by vague pledges to hit 3 per cent in the early 2030s.
Sir Keir Starmer has accepted the idea that aid spending should be “gradually reduced” to fund our security. It is falling to 0.3 per cent of national income by next year, less than half that ludicrous United Nations target once seen as sacrosanct. And a hefty chunk goes on housing refugees. But our heavily indebted and over-taxed nation is still blowing huge sums – more than £10bn this year – on the discredited concept that doling out cash to impoverished or war-torn corners of the world can solve highly complex problems. Instead, it fuels corruption and conflict amid often breathtaking waste while propping up some of the world’s worst regimes.
So why not slash almost all of this daft spending immediately to invest in defence? There would, of course, be howls of outrage from the smug aid industry that feasts on these handouts. It would be decried as “devastating” again by David Miliband as he pockets his seven-figure salary at the helm of the International Rescue Committee, while leading lights from the staff of around 100 on six-figure packages at London-based Save The Children will warn about deadly consequences. Such claims will be backed by alarmist BBC reports, which fail to inform viewers how their own international charity’s biggest donation comes from the aid budget.
It takes time to find savings or steer welfare reform through Westminster but here is a popular move already accepted in principle. And Trump is far from the only other Western leader slashing aid for developing nations, where it failed so dismally beyond a few health programmes despite donations from the 32 richest countries almost tripling this century. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden are among nations doing the same. The boom launched four decades ago by Live Aid is ending. We need to focus on arms, not aid, in this lethal new era.