THE former head of Nato has warned that Labour’s defence spending boost will be “painful”.
George Robertson, who was secretary general of the alliance from 1999 to 2003, hinted that public spending will need to be further squeezed to afford increased military spending.
The former Labour MP, now a member of the House of Lords, told Politico: “It will be painful, and it will be difficult, and it will require politicians to outline what the dangers and the risks actually are.”
He insisted that the UK Government must make the political argument for spending ever more on defence, saying that the public were “unaware” of the depleted state of the nation’s military adding: “If they were aware of it that might change opinions.”
The UK Government has already raided the international development budget to fund an increase in defence spending and has now signed up to spend 5% of gross domestic product, a measure of the size of the national economy, on the military.
It comes after Donald Trump demanded Nato members hike their defence budgets, after complaining that US allies were “freeloading” on the huge sums spent by America.
However, major concerns have been raised about increased military spending, with a former adviser to the United Nations’ secretary general previously warning that it would not make the UK safer.
Mark Seddon, who was an adviser to Ban Ki-moon, told The National: “We’re promising to increase defence spending eventually to 5% which is a very substantial increase, and that can only mean major cuts in education, health spending, welfare spending, right across the board.
"That isn’t really being debated in any serious way, it seems to me.”
He added: “The idea that spending more on munitions factories is going to save the British economy and make us safer is for the birds.”
Keir Starmer (below) has pitched the defence spending spree as a way of jump-starting the ailing UK economy – an argument that has also been dismissed by experts.
Economist James Meadway previously told The National that it was “one of the most inefficient ways to create jobs”.
He said: “If the Government is saying military spending, ramping up defence production will create more jobs, this is a bad way to do that.”
Meadway added: “The stuff that really creates jobs, it’s actually probably fairly obvious.
“If you go to the NHS and you put more money into that, that means you're pretty immediately going to employ more nurses, more doctors, more people to your hospitals – all sorts of people working in a pretty labour-intensive healthcare occupation.”
