ANNOUNCING the government’s spending review, which sets out day-to-day spending for the next four years, chancellor Rachel Reeves made a massive increase on defence spending the centrepiece of Labour’s plans.
Echoing the call by prime minster Keir Starmer, Reeves proclaimed that Britain will became a ‘defence industrial superpower. With the jobs, the skills and the pride that comes with it,’ as she announced plans to spend 2.5% of the UK’s economic output on defence by 2027.
In her statement to Parliament on Wednesday, Reeves claimed that global insecurity meant a ‘new era for defence and security’ was an absolute priority for Labour.
In an attempt to keep the TUC and other trade union leaders firmly behind her plan to turn the UK into a war economy, she added the throwaway line that all this increase in military spending would lead to job creation across the UK.
Under the plan, Reeves announced on Wednesday, spending on defence will increase to 2.6% of GDP (gross domestic product, the total productive wealth produced by the UK).
But the ‘ambition’ for Reeves and Starmer is to increase this to 3% in the future.
However, even 3% is not enough to satisfy the NATO bosses being pushed by US president Donald Trump to massively increase spending on defence, as American imperialism ramps up its war drive across the world.
NATO is demanding its member states spend 3.5% for core defence spending and a further 1.5% on ‘defence-related’ areas.
In total, NATO member states are committing to spending 5% of GDP on defence spending – the figure that Trump has been insisting upon.
This was set out by NATO general secretary-general Mark Rutte after a meeting with Starmer last Monday. Following Reeves’ announcement, Rutte said that he sees no ‘discrepancy’ between Reeves’ current commitment and the targets of 5% that NATO is demanding.
This means 5% spending on defence, nearly double the amount Reeves announced.
Rutte said on Monday, that what was required in the UK and NATO states was not just unlimited spending on defence but a new ‘mindset’ amongst politicians and the working class, to transform the economies of the UK and Europe into precisely what Reeves and Starmer are working towards – a fully developed war economy where workers would willingly sacrifice their jobs, the welfare state, pay and lives to defend the profits of the ruling capitalist class.
Rutte spelt this out when he stated that the choice facing British workers was between having an NHS and pensions, or ‘learning Russian’.
This was clear in Reeves’ statement which boasted of the extra money for the NHS.
An increase of just 3% for a national health service that has been systematically underfunded and brought to the brink of collapse by over a decade of austerity cuts, will not ‘rescue’ the NHS, as Reeves claims.
This money will come from massive cuts in other areas of government spending, including a wholesale slashing of public sector jobs.
Reeves made it clear that her entire plan rests on savings from austerity cuts, along with attracting huge sums of investment from private international investors.
These investors are not queuing up to put their money into a UK economy that shrank by 0.3% in April.
Spending billions of pounds on the military, while begging the world’s financial investment sharks to risk their cash by investing in a collapsing economy, is the only solution for this Labour government, that came to power proclaiming it could ‘make capitalism work’.
There is no way to regenerate bankrupt British capitalism and the only solution open to the ruling class is to ensure that the working class pays the cost of recession and economic slump.
The powerful UK working class will never accept their lives being destroyed to keep the bosses and bankers from going bust.The only way for the working class to resolve this crisis is to force their trade unions to act by calling mass actions leading to a general strike to bring down this Labour government and bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and build a socialist planned economy. This is the way forward!
