CUTS to infrastructure projects like roads and school repairs threaten 10,000 UK jobs following outgoing PM Keir Starmer’s decision to cut billions of pounds to pay for more defence equipment, according to an analysis of the government’s own figures published yesterday.
The PM’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) revealed this week that an extra unfunded £15 billion is to be used as defence investment to boost British industry and revamp the country’s armed forces. Starmer did not specify the source of the funding, apart from £6.8bn from unidentified cuts to departmental investment programmes, leaving another £4.7bn entirely unaccounted for.
The analysis by Transition Security Project researchers reveals that while the extra defence investment would generate about 10,000 jobs by 2029-30, cuts to other government departments will destroy about 20,000 jobs.
David Edgerton, professor in the history of science and technology at King’s College London, said: ‘The defence dividend is, broadly speaking, a big con.
‘I would expect the import content of a road to be lower than that of military equipment, some of which will be fully imported. It may well also be the case that, even if fully made in the UK, military equipment requires fewer workers than the equivalent expenditure on roads.
‘The government is spending more than £2bn, for example, on new fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs which are mainly made in the US. They also say the figures show the increasingly automated nature of high-end defence manufacturing.
‘There is no reason whatever to expect military expenditure to generate more jobs than any other kind of expenditure, and we should expect it to be far less productive than investment in, say, railways or factories,’ he added.
Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, the country’s largest trade union, said: ‘This timely analysis highlights how making cuts to government departments to bankroll more military spending will result in job losses. This costly and wasteful plan means extra cash for war and overseas interventions, but less for schools and hospitals.’
Undeterred, Andy Burnham MP, Starmer’s probable heir apparent as PM, declared on Thursday that he was committed to pushing through increased defence spending commitments if installed as PM.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned that NATO members risk losing US security guarantees if they do not spend more on defence. PM Starmer duly announced an additional £15bn, on top of his £298bn military spending plans, for the next four years in his DIP.
However, just where these cuts will in fact be made was made clear by Burnham ruling out making ‘crude’ cuts to Britain’s welfare bill as he outlined plans to spend more to force nearly a million young people aged 16-24 who are not in work or employment, back into low paid work and off benefits, with only a few thousand apprenticeships.
Terrified that his backbench MPs will rebel again after Starmer’s previous cuts to benefit spending were restored, Burnham prefers cutting welfare less savagely so as not to ‘rightfully create backlash’, hoping to gain support from his backbench Labour MPs.
Welfare cuts would reduce the welfare bill in a ‘sustainable’ way over the long term by investing in apprenticeships, offering free transport for 16-to-18-year-olds, Burnham said without producing any evidence.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester, who has pledged to cut welfare to fund higher defence spending, will have to fill a £15bn black hole in Starmer’s defence investment plan, in the first few months of his premiership.
Welfare spending has risen sharply since Labour won the election two years ago, driven by an increase in sickness benefit claims for mental health disorders.
Labour’s failure to rescue the bankrupt British economy mired in stagflation and unrepayable state debt of nearly £ 3 trillion and a government debt approaching £1 trillion, by smashing state benefits and privatising the NHS and reducing wages to starvation levels is set to continue with Burnham’s duplicitous policies, or even a possible national government with the eager Tories.
What is required is for the trade unions to mobilise by recalling the TUC to organise a general strike to bring down the pro-capitalist Labour government and to bring in a workers government that will nationalise the industries and banks, and bring in a socialist planned economy. This is the only way forward!
