5 months ago
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Sunak has committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, which he plans to fund through cuts
In his speech yesterday Rishi Sunak claimed that Labour would not be able to continue supplying Ukraine with the military aid it needs in the way that the Conservative government is doing. But as he was speaking David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, and John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, were in Kyiv for a meeting with Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister. Labour released details of the visit last night.
Lammy said he and Healey told their hosts that Labour’s commitment to Ukraine was “ironclad”. He said:
As Putin seeks to divide the West, we visited Kyiv together to send a clear message that a change in government in the UK would mean no change in our military, diplomatic, financial and political support to Ukraine.
Moscow’s deepened cooperation with Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang requires us to deepen our cooperation with Britain’s allies to demonstrate that our commitment to Ukraine will outlast Vladmir Putin’s imperial invasion.
You can’t wish your way to more defence spending. You have to set out the plans and do it and that is why our plans now are fundamentally different to Labour.
And I have to say as defence Secretary, with everything that I know in this role, that I think that the Labour position presents a danger to this country because it will send a signal to our adversaries that we are not serious about our defence if we won’t set out that timetable.
Personally, I don’t mind people expressing their views on these things. It doesn’t, you know, what lanyard somebody wears, doesn’t particularly concern me.
But I do think – and this is where I think Esther McVey has a point – that what we want is our civil servants to be getting on with the main job. And the main job is to serve the department they work for, in my case, defence, but across Whitehall.
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