Labour’s defence strategy has been dismissed as a “pantomime” after fresh data showed Russian military aircraft are probing Nato’s defences at a rate of roughly once every day.
Keir Starmer is due to travel to Turkey on Tuesday morning for what is expected to be a difficult Nato summit, as critics warn he has not done enough to safeguard Britain.
Downing Street is also preparing for a parting broadside from Donald Trump, after US officials claimed countries including the UK were “lagging behind” on Nato defence spending commitments.
In a further worrying episode, it has emerged that a Russian aircraft flew close to the British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales last week.
The carrier deployed two F-35 fighter jets to track the Russian maritime patrol plane, which also released several sonic buoys near the British vessel in what appeared to be a deliberate provocation.
No 10 described the incident, which unfolded in the Norwegian Sea, as “unsafe and unprofessional”.
Government insiders said the encounter was among 700 incursions Nato jets have been forced to respond to over the past two years — close to one every day on average.
Kemi Badenoch said Vladimir Putin’s actions amounted to a “test” — and argued the government was failing it.
Humiliation: Officials fear Donald Trump could try to embarrass the PM over defence at this week’s Nato summit
In a speech on Tuesday, the Conservative leader will warn that Britain’s defence policy is becoming a ‘pantomime’ at the moment that the threat has grown to the most serious since the end of the Cold War.
Mrs Badenoch will urge Andy 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.
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‘So little that the former Defence Secretary quit the government because he thought the plans would put British troops in danger.’
Sir Keir will tell Nato allies this week that his controversial Defence Investment Plan (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 No 10 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.
No 10 fears that Mr Trump may use this week’s summit to humiliate Sir Keir over defence spending.
Speaking at the weekend, he said ‘weak’ British leaders had allowed the country to become a ‘deindustrialised welfare zone unable to stop Third World men arriving on boats’.
The two leaders are not expected to hold a formal meeting this week, despite it being Sir Keir’s final appearance on the world stage before leaving office. But Downing Street said they would be seated next to each other at a summit meeting tomorrow and insisted that their relationship remains ‘constructive’.
Ahead of the summit, Putin sent a clear message to defence chiefs over Russia’s willingness to threaten its member states, including Britain.
It emerged how 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.
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.
