According to weekend briefings, the Prime Minister is finally considering an additional £18 billion for defence over four years — roughly £4.5 billion a year. This follows a string of warnings from the Foreign Secretary that Russia, bleeding on the battlefields of Ukraine, has become "reckless and dangerous", and that "Europe and the UK must do more".
You don't say. Reform UK has been saying so since this Parliament began. The Conservatives, in fairness, said so too. Successive defence reviews said so. NATO said so. The Chief of the Defence Staff said so. The only people who appeared not to be listening were the Cabinet around the table in Downing Street.
The Numbers Don't Add Up
Let's be honest about what £18 billion actually buys. Spread across the Army, Navy, RAF, intelligence services, cyber and the nuclear deterrent, it is not transformational. It does not get us close to 3.5% of GDP on core defence — let alone the 5% total commitment NATO has set for 2035. It does not refill the empty munitions stockpiles. It does not rebuild a hollowed-out Royal Navy that is now struggling to put major surface combatants to sea. It does not address the manning crisis across all three services.
The honest analysis from the City AM defence trackers, the Institute for Government and the IFS is the same: the UK is currently spending below the NATO average, and the trajectory the government has set us on simply does not get the country to the level of capability that the present threat environment requires.
The Bloomberg War Game Should Be a Wake-Up Call
This week a NATO–Russia war simulation reported by Bloomberg found that the UK's defence spending gap leaves Britain dangerously exposed in any sustained European conflict. Our ammunition would run out in days, not weeks. Our reserves are too thin. Our procurement system is too slow. Our air defence is patchy. This is not Reform UK speculation. It is professional military judgement, made public.
And yet Labour's response is to leak a number to the Sunday papers in the hope of buying off the criticism. You cannot brief your way out of an armoured division. You cannot wargame your way out of empty magazines. You need to actually fund the kit, train the people and back British industry to produce it.
Where The Money Should Come From
Labour will say the money is hard to find. It is — when you are simultaneously expanding welfare, paying interest on a record debt pile, and pouring billions into asylum hotels and overseas aid. Defence is not the optional extra. Defence is the precondition for everything else. A country that cannot defend itself does not get to argue about anything else.
That means hard choices. It means cutting back on the foreign aid budget. It means ending the asylum hotel scandal — every pound spent on housing illegal entrants in four-star hotels is a pound not spent on a soldier, sailor or airman. It means recovering tens of billions from a benefits system that pays out faster than it processes claims. The money is there. The will is not.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would commit to a clear, costed pathway to 3.5% of GDP on core defence by the end of the next Parliament, with the 5% NATO target by 2035 as a firm floor not an aspiration. We would back British defence industry — shipbuilding on the Clyde, the Tyne and the Mersey, aircraft at Warton, munitions in the North West, drones from new domestic suppliers — because defence sovereignty depends on industrial sovereignty.
We would also be honest with the public about why this matters. Russia is not retreating. Iran is not stabilising. China's pressure on the Pacific is not easing. The 1990s "peace dividend" has been spent ten times over. The era of safety on the cheap is over. Labour are inching towards admitting it. Reform UK has been ready to say so for two years. Britain's security cannot wait for Westminster to catch up.