The world of security has been moving incredibly quickly in the last few weeks. Washington has been overhauled and not even the most long-established alliances are sacred.
Europe has woken up and it’s too late to panic – Trump has turned the United States from the keystone in Ukraine’s defence into a vulture circling for its precious metal reserves.
Starmer announced an increase in the defence budget from 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP. But earlier that day Kemi Badenoch gave what may turn out to be the more important speech for Britain’s future.
Unlike Keir, Badenoch understands that Trump has already fundamentally changed geopolitics. 0.2% of GDP is not going to reverse Britain’s unprecedented decline in influence.
We’re returning to an international order where hard power is paramount again, and where international institutions are being defunded and the rules come second to real politics.
The £13.2bn increase in defence spending is a step in the right direction, but it makes Starmer’s handing over the Chagos military base and £18bn even more unforgiveable than when he first announced it.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Badenoch explained how Britian must be free to leave international frameworks like the ECHR if they try to “stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country.” She is right.
Britain must learn to act in our own self interest, and cannot be “fooled into believing international law alone can keep the peace”.
She is the first leader to truly highlight how these institutions themselves can give a platform to activist NGOs and activist lawyers like Lord Hermer, let alone to hostile regimes in Russia and China.
Badenoch warned, before Starmer’s announcement, that 2.5% of GDP on defence is no longer a sufficient target, but not in a game of one-upmanship.
She promised she would support any measures to cut aid spending or welfare to direct more urgent funding to defence. It can’t wait until the Tories are back in power.
Putting defence and security back in its rightful place as the primary duty of government also means ensuring, as Kemi says, that our foreign policy “supports our national interests”.
Trump’s America is still democratic, still cherishes the fundamental liberal values for its citizens, and for that reason will remain a critical partner.
But the writing is on the wall for American involvement in Europe. The free ride is over in a way that will be existentially threatening for Ukraine unless the EU can step up together.
She knows that British interests, “as a trading nation”, rely on rules-based international frameworks in a way that the US now believes it is large enough to live without.
She knows British interests are not the same as Trump’s. Yet crucially she is able to see and understand Britain’s relationships, our usefulness to our allies, and our hard interests as assets to be traded and leveraged to bring about a stable world that works for us.
If Trump has brought back hard power politics, Badenoch is the first Western thought leader to have the courage to think through how it can work for us.
The Labour leadership have not, as yet, stepped up. Their negotiations with the EU over European security, which involve us granting more concessions on fishing and veterinary standards in return for the privilege of being able to spend our money protecting them, show they still work in a outmoded framework.
They’re still looking for brownie points with a liberal elite that is no longer in power.
Reform too offer little in the way of leadership. So enthralled to Donald Trump is Nigel Farage’s party that for a full day, not one Reform party politician was able to comment on whether they believed Trump was right to call Zelensky a ‘dictator’.
Farage “applauded” Trump for his peace negotiations with Russia, notwithstanding the fact that it involved ceding land to a regime that had committed murder on British soil, nor that only a third of his party’s own voters want to cut support to Ukraine.
Farage does have an asset – that he is Trump’s friend – but it’s not a useful one unless we can trust Farage to identify where the threats and opportunities for the UK are.
Kemi’s plan offers leadership in an uncertain world. Using our power and weight for our own interests rather than handing it to Mauritius or to blindly follow the United States into irresponsibility.
The government would do well to take her ideas for themselves.
