Chancellor Rachel Reeves donned the ubiquitous hard hat and hi-viz jacket – the default uniform of politicians trying to fool us into thinking they’re doing something constructive – when she visited a building site near Bedford on Wednesday where Universal, the Hollywood giant, is building its first theme park in Europe.

She was there to announce, with a flourish, that she was chipping in £1.3 billion of taxpayers’ money to help the project along.

This Madame Bountiful, please note, is the same Chancellor who is resisting all efforts to fund properly the rearming of our military because, she claims, she hasn’t got the money. Now, as it happens, I don’t object to the state sweetening the Universal deal: the theme park will further enhance the greater London region’s growing global status as the Los Angeles of the 21st century in the age of the streamers.

But a billion-plus for an entertainment complex while penny-pinching on rebuilding our hollowed-out military? It’s a strange priority, especially when two major wars rage (in Ukraine and the Gulf) and we are more seriously threatened by autocratic forces (above all Russia and China) than at any time since the end of the Cold War almost four decades ago.

The day before Reeves made her self-aggrandising awayday trip to Bedford marked the anniversary of the publication of the government-commissioned Strategic Defence Review (SDR), chaired by the estimable George Robertson, a former defence secretary in the Blair government who went on to become secretary general of Nato.

The SDR is an ambitious blueprint for the urgently needed rebuilding and modernising of our Armed Forces to meet the military challenges of the 21st century. It was adopted lock, stock and barrel by the Government. Robertson was assured by Starmer himself that he would come up with the money to fund it. In the foreword the Defence Secretary John Healey promised a new Defence Investment Plan ‘by autumn 2025’.

Well, autumn came and went – with no sign of the funding plan. Nor did it see the light of day over the winter. Spring came and went. Still nothing. Now it’s summer again and ministers still can’t tell us when we’ll get the plan. It will surely have to emerge before the next Nato summit in Turkey on July 7 to avoid embarrassment.

For, truth be told, we are now something of an international laughing stock when it comes to defence spending. ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick,’ an American president once wisely advised as a sensible posture in a dangerous world. Keir Starmer is now widely ridiculed as talking tough with barely a twig in his hand.

Big Promises, Little Funding 

‘Britain is now seen as suffering from its “say-do” gap,’ a senior Nato official observed. ‘It says a lot about supporting – and even leading – Nato and allied peace missions. And does very little.’

Starmer and Reeves know next to nothing about military matters and would seem to care even less. They are both trying to save their skins in a Labour Party which has turned against them. They realise more defence spending is not exactly the way to curry favour with a Labour Party moving Left.

Even though the risks and threats to the UK are greater now than at any time since the Cold War. ‘The most dangerous period that I have known,’ the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, said yesterday.

Yet our military is being starved of extra funds. As a share of GDP, defence is projected to rise from 2.4 per cent (when Labour came to power) to 2.5 per cent by 2027 – a measly 0.1 percentage point rise over three years. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.

There’s vague talk of heading to 3 per cent of GDP around the turn of the decade. Starmer has even signed up to the Nato commitment of 3.5 per cent by the middle of the 2030s. But he has not given the slightest indication of how we’d reach either figure. Perhaps he has concluded (realistically) that it won’t be his problem.

The harsh truth is that there’s a £28 billion shortfall over the next four years in what the military requires and the funds allocated to it so far. That’s before you even add in the cost of implementing the SDR, which would add many billions more.

Yet the word from Whitehall is that Starmer-Reeves are proposing no more than an extra £15 billion to £18 billion for defence spread over the next four years. In the grand scheme of things – and given the treacherous world in which we now live – that is, frankly, peanuts.

It wouldn’t even cover the current shortfall. The SDR would be a dead duck. Britain, only recently Nato’s second-biggest defence spender (as a share of GDP), would be relegated to the ranks of the also-rans.

There’s no money to do more, bleats the Treasury. The tax burden is already at a record high. We’re borrowed to the hilt. In truth, the problem is not shortage of cash. It’s the Government’s priorities. For Starmer-Reeves, to their ever-lasting shame, defence is simply not a priority.

Compared with the tax and borrowing plans they inherited in the summer of 2024, by the end of the decade taxes will have increased by £340 billion and borrowing by £260 billion. A massive £600 billion increase in resources available to the Government. Yet still Starmer-Reeves penny-pinch defence.

Defence Takes a Back Seat 

During the lifetime of this Government, should it last the full five years, welfare spending will rise by £90 billion to more than £400 billion. But between now and 2029, defence will rise a mere £10 billion, if that.

Perhaps we should not be surprised. As the latest dump of the Mandelson Files revealed, Labour is focused on tax rises to fund more welfare. Defence just doesn’t get a look in. By 2030 we will be spending £120 billion on various sickness and disability benefits. Current defence spending is barely half that amount.

This week we learned that the total cost of subsidising renewable energy and the need to upgrade the National Grid to handle unreliable renewables will rise from £20 billion in 2024-25 to £40 billion in 2030-31. Tens of billions squandered in pursuit of Ed Miliband’s Net Zero fantasies, making an infinitesimal difference to global CO2 emissions, since we now account for less than 1 per cent of them.

So, Starmer-Reeves, you tell me there’s no money to spend more on defence? I say pull the other one. There’s plenty of cash to modernise our military if only you made it a priority – and had the political will and courage to reform welfare and end the mad dash to Net Zero. But you don’t. Instead, you put the defence of the realm in jeopardy – and you put yourselves and your party above country.

A Failure to Rebuild Defence 

Beware, dear readers. If and when the plans for more defence spending are eventually published, there will be the usual bluster, spin and fanciful claims. But if the extra money amounts to no more than £18 billion spread over four years, in reality there will be drastic cuts hidden within the propaganda froth. There is already talk of delaying work on the next generation of warships and fighter jets.

As I write I learn that HMS Prince of Wales, one of our two troubled aircraft carriers, is yet again undergoing repairs, this time in Stavanger, Norway, where it was participating in a Nato exercise. As usual, we’re assured it’s only a minor problem. But the work is taking longer than initially expected and a planned visit to Copenhagen has been cancelled.

Starving defence doesn’t just make it hard to modernise with new weapons systems. It undermines the efficacy of what military hardware we still have. Which, in turn, makes us yet more vulnerable.

There are many reasons to despise this failing Government. But when the history books are written, the failure to rearm in the face of clear and present dangers will be the most telling. Even those who thought they could appease the Nazis in the 1930s increased defence spending by more than Starmer-Reeves – a fitting epitaph for their dereliction of duty, and nothing less than a national scandal.