Britain must be ready to face war with or without US support, Sir John Major warns Starmer
Sir John Major has piled the pressure on the Government to increase defence spending, warning Britain “must face the possibility of conflict without the full-hearted support of the US”.
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The former Conservative prime minister was joined by former military chiefs, and a group of MPs and peers in warning the UK needs to be better prepared for war.
In a letter to the Times, Sir John also said: “We are living in a belligerent environment, which may worsen. The UK — and Europe more generally — must be sufficiently equipped and able to defend itself.
“The argument that ‘we cannot afford it’ will be irrelevant if Putin succeeds in Ukraine — and then, perhaps, moves on into Nato territory.
“If we and our European allies are not prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to protect our people and our sovereign territory, it will be a betrayal of our history and our future.”
In a separate letter, Lord Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff, compared the current levels of defence expenditure to the situation before the Second World War.
He added: “In 1939, when war broke out, the figure shot up to 19% and in 1940 when we were fighting for our very survival it rose to the staggering figure of 46%. That is the frightening cost of fighting a war that for a modest increase in defence spending earlier could have been avoided.
“Putin is not just a threat but a proven aggressor. Today, where is the prudent Chamberlain who began the rearmament programme or the Churchill who led the country in its darkest hour? No-one of that calibre is at present resident in Downing Street.”
And in a third letter, a cross-party gathering of MPs and peers who have set up an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on re-armament said they were “deeply concerned” about the current state of Britain’s armed forces.
They added: “The gap between the threats the UK faces and the military capabilities we have is wide and growing wider.”
The new APPG will “raise public awareness about the threats we face; emphasise the reduced state of our military capability; and create a political consensus that the government must rearm our nation”, they said.
The latest wave of pressure to increase the UK’s commitment to defence comes in the same week that the author of a major defence review criticised the Government’s slow progress.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a Labour former defence secretary and Nato chief, co-authored the Strategic Defence Review.
He accused the Government of “corrosive complacency” on defence spending, and said “non-military experts in the Treasury” were engaging in “vandalism”.