Can Burnham afford to delay raising defence spending?

Can Andy Burnham really delay setting out how he will raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 until next year’s spending review? The first hostile Labour question that he received at his first Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday came from Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP who chairs the defence select committee. Dhesi’s argument was that ‘vibes alone just will not be enough’ and that the Prime Minister was ‘kicking the can down the road’ by ‘waiting for a fiscal event in a future year’. It is, though, not one being made by a critical mass of Labour MPs, and that is presumably why Burnham feels more comfortable with a bit of can-kicking.

There is a strong tradition within the Labour party on defence, but it’s not one that is over-represented in the parliamentary party (PLP) at the moment. Indeed, the background of many Labour MPs tends to be of the third sector. This is one of the reasons Keir Starmer ended up in such a pickle over welfare reform: he found himself facing a PLP skilled in campaigning and particularly emotionally energised about state support. While most of those same MPs accept in principle that their party needs to be strong on defence, particularly in today’s world, they do not have the same innate emotional reaction to delays to defence spending as they do to benefit cuts. Dhesi will know that his colleagues are more likely to cause real trouble on the latter.

That said, there is private frustration with John Healey that the very problem he resigned as defence secretary over, triggering the end of Starmer’s premiership, isn’t something he has now been able to resolve fully as Chancellor. He does enjoy a level of goodwill among colleagues, though that too will wane as he ends up being the one to say ‘no’ to their spending demands. This will especially be the case if Burnham wants him to be the bad cop while he continues to give the impression he’s in favour of everything his party asks for. 

But it’s not just the reaction of the PLP that Burnham needs to worry about. He will find as he meets more European leaders and builds his own relationship with Donald Trump that they are less prepared to be forgiving of any suggestion Britain isn’t pushing harder on defence spending and taking its Nato commitments seriously. And, as Lord Hutton has pointed out today, Vladimir Putin doesn’t base his decisions on Britain’s spending review cycle – or if he does, it’s to exploit the vulnerabilities caused by a government taking its time.