LONDON — Looking to make the U.K.’s military “war ready,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a series of government moves to bolster its fighting capability June 2. The country faces a “more serious and immediate” threat than any time since the Cold War, he said, and “every citizen must play their part.”
He announced measures to strengthen the U.K.’s nuclear weapons capability — upgrading the submarine-based Trident program, acquiring U.S.-built fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear bombs and strengthening nuclear weapons cooperation with Washington and Paris.
Starmer’s “Strategic Defence Review” was commissioned immediately upon his government’s election in July 2024. It includes measures to make the British army “10 times more lethal,” and creating a “New Hybrid Navy” and “next-generation” Royal Air Force.
If implemented, the measures would strengthen London’s military capacities against its rivals. The rulers in London have joined Washington in pressuring Israel to conclude a long-term ceasefire before Hamas is defeated. At the same time, they are seeking to secure British imperialist interests in the Middle East.
London uses bases in a dozen countries in the region, including its hub at Akrotiri in Cyprus, where over 2,000 troops are stationed, along with warships in the Mediterranean Sea and Arab-Persian Gulf.
“We join with the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S. in campaigning with the statement “Defend Israel’s battle to prevent another Holocaust! US troops, bases and warships out of the Mideast,” Communist League leader Jonathan Silberman told the Militant. “And we demand the removal of all British forces as well.”
Starmer’s review seeks to reverse a decadeslong decline in the U.K.’s armed forces’ fighting capacity. “Troop numbers are down, morale is weak, and some aging equipment is in a poor state,” BBC military correspondent Jonathan Beale said.
This has gone hand in hand with the weakening of Britain’s imperialist rulers compared with their rivals. Defense Secretary John Healey said the new measures will lead to the “biggest shake-up of U.K. defense for over 50 years.”
The review is rooted in Britain’s commitment to NATO, which has been the course of all Labour governments since World War II. At the NATO summit last month, London pledged to raise military spending to 5% of its gross domestic product by 2035. Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties supported this.
But the U.K.’s decline also limits what the government considers possible, given the deterioration of its economy and government budget. Every military commitment is conditioned with the caveat, “if economic conditions allow.”
So Starmer’s course will have to include stepped-up efforts to make the working class pay for expanding the military. But this will take a fight. The government was recently forced to retreat on moves to impose welfare cuts.
While highlighting the threat Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine poses for all the capitalist rulers in Europe, the review focuses on the need for technological improvements in the military, rather than “boots on the ground.” It provides for only a small increase in the size of the army — currently more than 2,000 below its target size of 73,000 and experiencing a decline of 300 per month — along with a boost to the army reserves.
There are no moves to introduce conscription, which has been enacted in Poland and is now being considered by Germany’s rulers.
The British government’s course has met ready allies in the trade union leadership, who see the promise of more jobs in a ramped-up war industry. In a June 2 statement, Unite the Union supported Starmer’s promise to “translate defense spending into British growth, British jobs, British skills, British innovation,” pushing for it to “come into effect more quickly.”
The same union leadership sharply criticized the government’s recent decision to purchase U.S. F-35A aircraft, as opposed to British-built planes.
“If we fail to back our defense industry then we will lose our sovereign capability to build fighter jets,” said Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham.
“Class-conscious workers reject these nationalist and militarist appeals,” Silberman said. “We say ‘not a penny, not a person for the British government, its budget or its war machine!’
“The unions should fight for jobs created by a government program of useful public works at wages, shifts and conditions necessary for families to live today, not an armaments program.”