A former NATO chief and grandee of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party criticised the British prime minister on Tuesday for failing to adequately fund defence, leaving the country unsafe.
George Robertson, who served in the 1990s as UK defence secretary before leading NATO, told the Financial Times there was a gap between Starmer’s rhetoric and action on defence, and that Starmer was “not willing to make the necessary investment.”
Asked about Robertson’s comments, Starmer’s spokesperson told reporters that Downing Street “completely” rejected the characterisation.
“It’s vital to make the right decisions. The prime minister is determined to ensure the defence investment plan is fit for the threats that we face,” the spokesperson said.
‘We Are Not Safe’
Robertson, who helped draft a Strategic Defence Review commissioned by Starmer when Labour returned to power in 2024, later said in a lecture delivered in Salisbury, southern England, that Britain had become vulnerable to external threats.
“We are under-prepared. We are under-insured. We are under attack. We are not safe,” he said.
Ahead of the lecture, the Financial Times reported that he was expected to call out finance minister Rachel Reeves for devoting “only 40 words” to defence in a budget speech last autumn and not mentioning it at all in an update last month.
The newspaper said he was expected to describe decisions made by “non-military experts in the Treasury” as “vandalism.”
‘Corrosive Complacency’
Starmer has blamed underinvestment in the military on 14 years of rule by the rival Conservative Party, and has promised the largest sustained rise in defence spending since the Cold War, to reach 3 percent of national output in the next parliament.
However, the government has yet to publish a 10-year defence investment plan initially due before the end of last year, aimed at meeting the ambitions set out in the 2024 review co-written by Robertson.
The review called for a shift towards drones, digital warfare and data-driven combat systems, reflecting lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine.
“The current conflict in the Middle East has to be a rude wake-up call to this country, on top of what we’ve already seen in Ukraine,” Robertson said in his address.
“It should remind us in the United Kingdom of our vulnerabilities, and there are many, and in it is a detailed blueprint for what needs to be done,” he added.
He warned that delivering such a transformation of homeland defence and deterrence would require significant funding.
Starmer’s Response
Starmer said last week that the war in Iran must be a turning point for Britain, pledging to strengthen the economy and military to cope with a more “volatile and dangerous” world.
But Robertson accused Britain’s political leadership of a “corrosive complacency” towards defence, saying risks and threats were acknowledged only in words and that even a promised national conversation on defence had yet to begin.
“The cold reality of today’s dangerous world is that we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget,” he concluded.
Why This Matters
Robertson is not a political opponent — he is a Labour peer and former NATO secretary-general who helped shape Starmer’s own defence review. His criticism carries weight because it comes from within the party’s establishment.
The dispute highlights growing unease among defence experts about the gap between Starmer’s promises and actual spending. With wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and rising global instability, the question of whether Britain is spending enough on defence has never been more urgent.
For now, Downing Street insists the investment will come. But Robertson’s warning — “we are not safe” — is a stark one, and it comes from a man who once ran NATO.
Sources: Reuters
