Robertson Warns Starmer of Frosty Welcome at NATO
Lord Robertson — the former NATO secretary-general who co-authored the government’s own defence review — told MPs the £15bn Defence Investment Plan fails to chart a route to the alliance’s 3.5% core spending target: “Quite simply we are running out of years… the challenge is now bigger, more serious and earlier than we had anticipated and yet the Defence Investment Plan itself does not come up to it.” Of Starmer’s reception in Ankara: “I think relations may well be frosty.”
The criticism carries unusual weight because Robertson wrote the review the plan was meant to fund — making this the second architect in a week, after Healey’s “Treasury said no”, to disown the result in public. It lands as Starmer sits at a summit where Washington demands 5% “as soon as possible”, Britain announced a £254m missile purchase as a gesture, and every commitment made binds a successor who has promised to fully fund a plan two of its own parents call inadequate. Watch the communiqué’s spending language tomorrow, and whether Burnham’s camp treats it as inherited obligation or renegotiable ambition.