Defence Secretary John Healey STILL won’t say when UK’s military spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP – despite Trump demanding 5% and planning to abandon European allies_Nhy
John Healey has repeatedly refused to say when the UK will increase its defence spending, despite Donald Trump‘s US planning to abandon its allies in Europe.
The Defence Secretary was asked seven times if he would set out a timeline to Britain hitting a baseline of 2.5 per cent of GDP or more, but declined to do so, in an interview with Sky News.
It came after Trump’s new US defense secretary Pete Hegseth told Nato allies that his country could not be relied upon to come to their aid in a war with Russia.
The president himself went further last night and announced plans to hold talks with Vladimir Putin about peace in Ukraine, raising fears he is about to sell Kyiv down the river.
Trump has demanded that Nato states spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence, even though the US itself does not spend that much.
But Mr Healey was cagey on when the UK would even hit half that rate.
Ahead of a meeting in Brussels today he old Sky News: ‘Everyone accepts that we need to spend more on defence.
‘We are a government that was elected just last year with a commitment to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP – that’s a level we have not spent in the UK since 2010 when Labour was last in government.’
The Defence Secretary was asked seven times if he would set out a timeline to Britain hitting a baseline of 2.5 per cent of GDP, but declined to do so, in an interview with Sky News.
It came after Trump’s new US defense secretary Pete Hegseth told Nato allies that his country could not be relied upon to come to their aid in a war with Russia.
The president himself went further last night and announced plans to hold talks with Vladimir Putin about peace in Ukraine, raising fears he is about to sell Kyiv down the river.
Labour has promised a timetable for boosting defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP will be revealed in the strategic defence review in the spring.
Trump said he had agreed with Russia’s leader to ‘work together, very closely’ on bringing the three-year conflict to an end in a phone conversation on Wednesday.
The US has suggested that as part of a peace deal Ukraine must accept it will have to give up some territory to Russia and Nato membership is not a realistic prospect.
But Nato’s official position – endorsed by Sir Keir Starmer’s Government in the UK-Ukraine 100-year partnership – is that Kyiv is on an ‘irreversible’ path to joining the alliance.
Trump’s call with the Russian president came just hours after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned ‘Putin is not preparing for peace’ and called for unity from Ukraine’s allies.
The Associated Press reported that Trump said he spent more than an hour on the phone with Mr Putin and ‘I think we’re on the way to getting peace’.
The US president later spoke to Mr Zelensky but he was non-committal about whether Ukraine would be an equal participant in US negotiations with Russia.
‘I think President Putin wants peace and President Zelensky wants peace and I want peace,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. ‘I just want to see people stop being killed.’
Trump’s call with the Russian president came just hours after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned ‘Putin is not preparing for peace’ and called for unity from Ukraine’s allies.
Mr Hegseth indicated that Washington is intent on getting Europe to take on most of the financial and military burden of defending Ukraine, including a possible peacekeeping force that would not include US soldiers.
Allies had been waiting to hear how much continued support the White House plans to provide to the country under Donald Trump’s new administration.
Mr Hegseth also suggested the troops should be deployed as a non-Nato mission without Article Five protections, which say that an armed attack on one member of the military bloc is considered an attack on all.
