When Sir Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour party five years ago, it must have been a feat of imagination to picture himself as prime minister. It would surely have gone beyond his strangest fever dreams to think he would be dealing more or less weekly with defence policy. That he would be making spending decisions with an eye to placating President Donald Trump probably would have caused some kind of internal short circuit.
Yet here we are. It is five weeks until Nato’s annual summit, held this year in The Hague, the first such gathering since Trump returned to the White House. The President’s last summit was in Watford in December 2019; 17 of the leaders he encountered there have since left office, though the then-prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, is now Nato’s secretary-general.
Can the United Kingdom afford to spend the amount that Trump is demanding?
One thing has not changed: Trump thinks that his Nato allies are not spending enough on defence and are taking advantage of the United States.
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