Keir Starmer makes what is expected to be his final appearance on the global stage today — with the prospect of another sharp rebuke from Donald Trump looming.
The outgoing prime minister is travelling to the Nato summit in Turkey, with less than two weeks to go before he is due to hand power to Andy Burnham.
But Sir Keir is likely to face criticism over his troubled defence spending package. Following months of disputes inside Whitehall and the resignation of Defence Secretary John Healey, the promised £15billion boost over five years emerged as largely unfunded — and included no clear schedule for raising military spending to 3 per cent of GDP.
The US president has pressured the alliance into accepting an even tougher 3.5 per cent benchmark, and is expected to make his frustration plain when leaders meet.
Mr Trump has already had a series of public clashes with Sir Keir, dismissing him as ‘no Churchill’ after he declined to take part in the chaotic Iran conflict.
Keir Starmer is making what may be his last major appearance on the world stage today — with Donald Trump potentially ready to deliver another public broadside
Mr Trump has pushed Nato towards a 3.5 per cent defence spending goal and is expected to voice his dissatisfaction at the leaders’ summit
The prime minister has so far committed only to an ‘ambition’ for defence spending to reach 3 per cent of GDP during the 2030s
Mr Trump reportedly called Nigel Farage to congratulate him when Sir Keir was forced to announce his resignation last month.
Despite it being Sir Keir’s final outing on the world stage, the two men are not due to meet one-on-one.
The PM will tell Nato allies that the DIP represents a major step on the way to hitting Nato’s target of spending 3.5 per cent on defence by 2035. But it only commits the UK to reaching 2.7 per cent by the end of the decade.
New Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said Labour would ‘commit the resources to evidence the trajectory to 3.5 per cent’ at a spending review next year. But neither No10 nor Mr Burnham have so far agreed to the timetable.
Nato chief Mark Rutte said he expected member states to produce ‘clear, concrete and credible’ plans to hit the 3.5 per cent target.
Speaking at the weekend, Mr Trump said ‘weak’ British leaders had allowed the country to become a ‘deindustrialised welfare zone unable to stop Third World men arriving on boats’.
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Downing Street said Sir Keir and Mr Trump will be seated next to each other at a meeting tomorrow and insisted that their relationship remains ‘constructive’.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch is warning that Britain’s defence policy is becoming a ‘pantomime’ at the moment threats are at their most serious since the end of the Cold War.
In a speech this morning, Mrs Badenoch will urge Mr Burnham to take up her offer to help push through welfare cuts to help fund defence investment.
But she will warn that the would-be prime minister has ‘said nothing’ about the growing threats facing the UK.
‘We are sending an outgoing Prime Minister who is now completely powerless to that Nato summit,’ she will say.
‘And he is taking with him a Defence Investment Plan which he knows is not fit for purpose. With barely half of the additional funding that our armed forces need.’
Ahead of the summit, Putin sent a clear message to defence chiefs over Russia’s willingness to threaten its member states, including Britain.
It has emerged a Russian aircraft conducted a ‘danger close’ low pass of the HMS Prince of Wales while the £3.5billion carrier was operating in the Norwegian Sea.
After ignoring requests from the carrier’s control room, the Bear-F maritime patrol aircraft then dropped tens of sonobuoy projectiles in close proximity to HMS Prince of Wales which could have injured sailors or damaged the carrier.
Confrontation: An F-35 jet launched from HMS Prince of Wales shadows a Russian military aircraft as it drops a sonic device, inset
Experts have warned that Vladimir Putin is testing the resolve of the UK
British commanders scrambled two F-35 jets from HMS Prince of Wales to shadow the Russian aircraft in the carrier’s first ‘real-time’ engagement with enemy forces.
The Royal Navy has released information about the July 2nd incident for the first time.
At the time HMS Prince of Wales was sailing as part of the UK’s Carrier Strike Group which also consisted of the Type-45 destroyer HMS Duncan, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Tidespring which were conducting freedom of navigation patrols in the High North.
The Arctic Sentry patrols are intended to reinforce security. The engagement came just weeks after the UK seized a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the English Channel for the first time and after a Russian fighter jet flew within feet of a Royal Air Force intelligence gathering aircraft conducting a patrol over the Black Sea.
