General Lord Richard Dannatt has warned that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will face severe consequences if he and Chancellor Rachel Reeves do not increase UK defense spending from the proposed 2.5% to between 3% and 3.5%. He argues that failing to prioritize defense could render the upcoming strategic review ineffective. Dannatt also expressed skepticism about sending British troops as peacekeepers to Ukraine, noting that current military capabilities and personnel numbers are insufficient for such commitments, potentially leading to embarrassment for the UK Army.
Unless Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves can look at themselves in the mirror and look at their priorities and say, yes, health, education, roads, infrastructure are important, but actually defence and the security of this nation are more important, and find ways of producing more money well beyond 2.5% towards 3 or 3.5% for starters on our defence budget, then this strategic defence review is going to be hollow, it's going to be a failure.
It would probably require about 100,000 people. The UK would have to supply quite a proportion of that. And we really couldn't do it. Our military is so run down at the present moment, numerically and as far as capability and equipment is concerned, it would potentially be quite embarrassing.
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