This week, Keir Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey unveiled what they call a “Strategic Defence Review.” In reality, it’s a glossy brochure of wishful thinking, delay, and delusion. The UK’s armed forces, the review admits, are nowhere near ready for a serious conflict — and instead of sounding the alarm, Starmer hit snooze.
The world is not at peace. Russia continues its brutal war in Ukraine, China is flexing its muscles in the Indo-Pacific, and rogue states like Iran and North Korea grow bolder by the day. Even the Labour Government claims war with a nuclear-armed peer like Russia is a possibility within the next four years.
And their response? A vague, unfunded promise to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP… by the mid-2030s. Not next year. Not even this decade. Starmer’s grand strategy is to let the threat grow, and maybe, if there’s room in the budget in 2035, we might consider taking defence seriously. Meanwhile, our forces are crumbling. The Army has shrunk from 156,000 during the Cold War to a skeletal 73,000. Recruitment is in crisis. We don’t have enough medics to handle mass casualties.
We can’t even defend the undersea cables that carry 95% of our internet traffic. And the Royal Navy is expected to cut costs by hitching rides on commercial ships. This isn’t readiness — it’s reckless. And what does Starmer do in the face of all this? He hands over the Chagos Islands — a vital Western outpost in the Indian Ocean — to Mauritius, a Chinese client state.
A strategic gift to Beijing, no less, from a government that claims to be strengthening security. You couldn’t make it up. At this week’s press conference in Glasgow, even the media couldn’t swallow the spin. The BBC described Starmer’s financial case as “shaky.” And they’re right. No costings. No timelines. No urgency.
Just empty rhetoric from a man more concerned about headlines than hard power. This is the same Keir Starmer who boasts about putting the UK on “war-footing” while quietly agreeing to make our aircraft carriers more “versatile” — code for cutting costs — and stripping back parachute training.
The same man who says we’ll fight cyber-warfare while ignoring 89 major cyber-attacks on our country last year alone. The same man who claims to care about British sovereignty, while dragging us further under the thumb of outdated international treaties. You want to stop a war? You don’t do it with policy pamphlets and soft diplomacy. You do it by showing strength — real, credible, immediate strength. And that means spending now, building now, preparing now.
But Labour doesn’t believe in strength. They believe in globalism, appeasement, and hoping someone else will pick up the tab. Their defence strategy is the geopolitical equivalent of a fire drill without the fire exits. As things stand, the only people taking Britain’s defence seriously are our enemies. Russia watches. China smiles. And the British public are left wondering whether it’s time to start learning Russian, just in case.
If Starmer thinks this is a “defence transformation,” he’s right — he’s transforming us from a world power into a bystander. Britain deserves better than an army built on aspirations and a Prime Minister who thinks deterrence is just another line in a speech.
Richard Thomson served in the Royal Marines for eight years and stood as the Reform UK candidate for Braintree in the 2024 General Election