The New Realpolitik

Two speeches about changed geopolitical realities. Ahead of his visit to see Donald Trump on Thursday, Keir Starmer has announced an acceleration in the government's plans to raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and 3% after the next election. This will be funded by cuts to the foreign aid budget, reducing it from a "protected" 0.5 to 0.3%. It was a "hard choice" said Starmer, but with uncertainty abounding ("a dangerous new era") and an aggressive Russia on the edges of Europe he maintained there weren't any other options. But there is the happy by-product of this boosting jobs as war industries are expanded.

There was also a speech by Kemi Badenoch, who readers might recall is the leader of the opposition. Trying to pre-empt whatever Starmer was going to announce on Tuesday afternoon, the Tory leader demanded an increase in military spending to 3% of GDP by gutting foreign aid entirely. She also doubled down on a suggestion made by James Cartlidge, the shadow defence minister, on Sunday's Laura Kuenssberg. He floated the idea of cutting more from social security for disabled people specifically to buy bombs and bullets. Badenoch confirmed that further "savings" could be made from the welfare bill, one of many "painful decisions on government spending" she would find morally wrenching in an unfortunate world where she becomes Prime Minister.

She went much further than Starmer did on Britain's place in the world. Badenoch said Britain believes rules are important because it is a trading nation. "... other countries are breaking the rules and we need to get serious about that and not pretend that those things aren't happening ...". Is she saying that the UK should take rule breakers to task for flouting global obligations, or is she suggesting we should be prepared to discard them ourselves? The implication tends toward the latter as she attacked Britain's membership of the European Convention, saying the ECHR should not stop this country from doing what is right for its people. This is "conservative realism". Not the "progressive internationalism" supposedly characterising Labour's approach to world affairs (a demonstrably stupid charge).

"It was so bland, formulaic, and unsurprising that it would have made Chat-GPT blush" went Conservative Home's scathing review. Quite. But Badenoch's address wasn't without politics. Because the Tory leadership are desperate, desperate to court Trump's administration they are in their own pathetic, twee way pantomiming US unilateralism and prostrating themselves as doormats and supplicants. Ironically, the US strategy they're kowtowing to was the stock-in-trade of the Tories themselves for the latter half of the last government. This was sovereignty without limits, or to put it more baldly, power without checks. Having seen off the encumbrances of the labour movement and institutional autonomy within the state during the Thatcher/Major years, and then extricating the country from the very limited checks on executive authority represented by the EU via Brexit, the Tories want to set Britain free from any remaining obligations, including those enforced by treaty, allowing it to pick and choose. For what purpose? To give them maximum flexibility to manage class relations at home in an uncertain world where unexpected, unwelcome upsurges happen.

But this is so very academic considering how Badenoch is exceedingly unlikely to see the next election as leader, let alone be within a shout of capturing Number 10.

Starmer, however, must be eagerly awaiting how this militarist turn lands. Yes, it will go down well with with the Donald on Thursday - especially the move to cut foreign aid (which is equally as stupid as the USAID cuts, considering how much soft power is bound up with the disbursement of funds). But domestically, more military spending might cut the mustard with the Reform-curious reactionary Labour voter. It's Britain standing on its own feet and not being reliant on America any more (therefore being implicitly anti-Trump), while being framed as against Russia - something that Nigel Farage and the other bad boys of Brexit have an ambiguous relationship with. Starmer is pummelling Reform exactly where they have a significant weakness and are in a position to challenge its patriotism, and without Reform having a convincing counter-argument. Starmer, therefore, is well positioned to reap some much needed political capital from the changed circumstances and reverse Labour's mediocre polling position. Badenoch? Not so much.

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