Posted on 11/08/2024 5:27:54 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Sir Keir Starmer is set to reveal plans to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP within weeks of Donald Trump taking office, The Telegraph understands.
The long-awaited timetable for increasing UK military spending is expected to be announced in the spring as Labour looks to build a relationship with the incoming US president.
The move would be seen as an olive branch to Mr Trump, who for years has railed against European allies for riding on the coat-tails of US defence spending and called for more contributions.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, used an interview with The Telegraph to declare the Government “will always do what’s necessary to defend the country”, saying a “path” to 2.5 per cent GDP spending was on its way.
Government insiders, Labour grandees and defence industry sources have all told The Telegraph they expect the timetable for hitting 2.5 per cent to be unveiled in spring 2025, just weeks after Mr Trump enters the White House in January.
It would follow the completion of the strategic defence review and potentially come alongside the announcements for the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) budgets for 2027 and 2028.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Uncle Sucker has been Uncle Sugar for far too long.
Amazing what a change in leadership does.
Starmer needs to be locked up and the ca$h clawed back.
Earlrer Nigel Farage said Starmer wants to abandon Diego Garcia. Dont think lefty is able to understand much
Should be three percent. It is ironic that it took a foreign leader to finally get the British government to do the primary duty of any British government, which is to ensure the military is fit to defend the realm.
Press reports say it was Biden who cajoled Starmer to hand sovereignty back to Mauritius.
This clown is tanking the economy so badly that 2.5% will be about £2 50.
Pretty funny to see the leader of UK Labor trying to act like the next Reagan.
As it is, I suspect his voters won’t be too happy, since he decimated their heating subsidy, which means sending millions back to 55 degree homes, as it was during the 1950s...now his voters are getting to understand why he did those cuts.
Of course the OTHER OPTION is to pick up the phone and try to talk in a civilized manner to Putin as he might well find that he doesn’t need to waste the money on defense, but instead might be able to restore the heating subsidy.
...and by the way, Europe NEVER delivers on its promises regarding defense spending, so what he promises is meaningless anyway.
The UK’s defense spending has generally been around 2.3% of GDP since 2015, and higher B4 that, so, I’m not inclined to complain much, there. The UK is also ahead of us in support for Ukraine, in terms of % of GDP.
I think the increase now is much more due to the Ukraine war and growing instability just about everywhere, than any worries about Trump. Trump is fine with anyone pulling their weight.
But it's expensive to sustain their socialist programs.
BTW, the numbers over on the Kiel Institute website are skewed, as the numbers for each country’s spending as a % of GDP take total support for a given country, and then divide it by the GDP for a single year. IIRC the GDP figure used is from 2022. I actually was able to contact the head of the Kiel Institute and ask him what was up with that, and his answer was basically that they didn’t have exact numbers for the current year. That’s crazy — an estimate would be better than taking a 2+ year figure and dividing it by the GDP for 2022 alone.
Point being that the UK, for example, is NOT spending 0.5% of it’s GDP per year on Ukraine. If you average it out it’d be more like 0.2% per year, and for the USA it’d be more like 0.16%.
Where in God’s name Trump comes up with $300 billion for the US support I have no idea. That’s more like the amount of all support committed to Ukraine from all parties (with ~ 90 billion from “everyone” not yet sent), and Europe is well ahead of us.
I’ll believe it when I see the socialist are crying and gnashing their teeth.
Until then, it’s a head fake!
Agreed 100%.
Of note, I really enjoyed Elon’s explanation of the effect of over-regulation on an economy: Basically that the cost to the economy is proportional to the square of the number of regulators. As a semi-retired engineer, I can really “dig” that kind of analysis. :-)
Of course, if one really wants to get in to it, you probably need courses in both linear and non-linear analysis, just for starters. I’ve forgotten most of that stuff, as those courses were 40+ years ago, and I never did really need to use that level of math a lot.
Those NATO deadbeats better start paying their dues. The boss is back in town.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4277068/posts?page=10#10
That said, Germany is the worst slacker, but they’ve gone into recession. They do have a foreign reserve of around 328 billion euros.
The US has been subsidizing European Socialism for the last 80 years.
Not even Ronald Reagan called term out on it.
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