Sir Jeremy Hunt warns defence spending 'may need to rise to 8 or 10 per cent' as he says UK 'must keep US happy'
Former Chancellor Sir Jeremy Hunt has warned the UK may need to increase defence spending to “8 or 10 per cent” of GDP if Russia succeeds in its war in Ukraine.
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Speaking to LBC’s Andrew Marr, Sir Jeremy also called Sir Keir Starmer to repair his relationship with Donald Trump after a feud erupted between the pair over the UK’s involvement in the US-Israel war on Iran.
“It might feel very good to give a speech like Mark Carney gave at Davos,” he said.
“But if the result of Britain doing that is that America says actually we're going to switch off intelligence support for Ukraine, or we're going to withdraw from NATO's European command structures, because we want to concentrate on China. If that happened, we would soon think that we had been pretty stupid.”
Warning that geopolitical chaos across the globe could see the UK forced to massively increase defence spending, he added: “We're now having an argument in the UK, in a very British sort of way, about whether we should increase defence spending from 2.5% of GDP to 3%.
“If Russia prevails in Ukraine, because America needs all its Patriot Missile Systems in the Middle East, because it stops sharing Intelligence, we'll be having a discussion about whether we need to be spending 8 or 10% of GDP on defence.
“So, we are paying the price for the fact that we don't stand on our own two feet in defence terms. And until such time as we do, I'm afraid we are going to have to continue walking this tightrope.”
Sir Jeremy went on to defend his record on defence spending when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary.
“I have to say that, it was too late, but I think the last government did make a start, and when I was Chancellor, we made the decision to increase it to 2.5%.
“In retrospect, that doesn't seem enough.. What we did was we we thought there was this big peace dividend after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What we didn't think hard enough about was that President Trump would speed this whole process up. And that's what's really happened. And I think we now have to recognise that until we are able to defend ourselves, we are going to get pushed around by the United States, indeed, by other powers, and that's a very bad place to be.
“And so yes, we need courage from Keir Starmer. We need courage, by the way, from opposition parties to say that we will support you on these difficult decisions, and given the state of public finances, that's going to have knock on effects. It's going to mean things like welfare reform become even more important. But I don't think we've got any time to waste.”