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LONDON — Keir Starmer has published a long-awaited plan to spend billions of pounds on defense that could cement his legacy as a world statesman. In doing so, he has effectively tied his successor’s hands. The British prime minister’s speech heralding the arrival of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) will probably be the last major piece of policy he announces before stepping down, with Andy Burnham all but certain to take over as leader in three weeks.  He announced an extra £15 billion for the armed forces to meet the greatest threats facing the U.K., including £5 billion towards autonomous systems such as drones and uncrewed vehicles. The defense budget now sits at almost £300 billion over the next four years. This included an additional £1.5 billion of new money secured by new Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis on top of the initial proposal – which prompted Jarvis’ predecessor, John Healey, to resign. But significant problems remain. The DIP gives no funding pathway to hit the U.K.’s NATO target of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, and with no commitment to provide one before the next general election, scheduled for 2029. The U.K. will hit 2.7 percent next year, and that number will not rise before 2030. Should he become prime minister, Burnham will have to use his first budget to find almost £5 billion to fund Starmer’s plans, as well as use his first spending review to find billions more to make good on Britain’s promise to NATO allies. Starmer took the opportunity to lay out what he sees as his key international achievements in office, talking up the coalitions he helped build to support Ukraine and bring stability in the wake of the Iran conflict. He also boasted of “delivering the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the 1980s.” In doing so, the outgoing PM effectively shone a light on what he believes Burnham’s priorities should be on the world stage, even setting out his own prescription for how they should be met. But at the same time he called attention to some of the deep frustrations during his own time at No.10, which saw him push national security up the Labour Party’s agenda while failing to match the pace of Britain’s allies in rearming. Andrew Kinniburgh, director-general of Make UK Defence, said: “As many other European allies rapidly accelerate towards meeting our new NATO target several years early, the U.K. is on the go-slow.” Partial relief The arrival of the DIP will allow defense companies and service personnel to breathe a sigh of relief. While arguments continue over the level of funding, many will be pleased that it provides some certainty and allows people to make commercial and strategic decisions after spending the last ten months in limbo. Kevin Craven, CEO of ADS, which represents more than 2,000 firms in the sector, said: “The clarity provided will support the U.K.’s defense industry to do what we do best: supply equipment, capabilities and services that ensure the UK’s national security.” Andy Burnham talks to the media in Ashton-in-Makerfield, England on June 9, 2026. | Anthony Devlin/Getty Images Yet there was widespread acceptance even at the plan’s launch that the price tag is only part of the picture. Answering questions at the headquarters of a drone manufacturer in Berkshire, Starmer described the DIP as a “massive step forward” while effectively admitting he had no road map for hitting 3 percent of GDP on spending, specifying that it “must be the number one priority at the next spending review.” Healey, who quit in protest partly at the refusal to set out a roadmap towards the U.K.’s spending pledges, said: “We need a target date for 3 percent and a clear credible funding plan to meet our NATO commitment for 3.5 percent on defence by 2035,” because “European security is at stake.” One Labour MP with a close interest in defense, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that the strategy “takes us forward” — but added “there is a lot more that needs to happen” which they said would now fall to Burnham when he assumes power.  A defense industry representative went further, saying: “It’s ludicrous that the PM could say earlier this month that our intelligence assessment is that Russia will be ready to invade a NATO country by 2030, only for him to then fail to commit to 3 percent by then.” Ed Arnold, associate fellow at RUSI, said the “modest uplift” under the DIP to take Britain to around 2.7 percent by 2029 “only defers a massive financial injection to defense.” Over to you Starmer also laid out what he thinks Burnham should prioritize in his first spending review as prime minister – a major exercise carried out by the Treasury every few years – but fired a warning shot over other forms of financing reportedly being considered.  The DIP explicitly states that defense “will be the number one priority” at the next spending review, even though it will almost certainly be presented by the next chancellor and not Rachel Reeves, who appeared alongside Starmer at Tuesday’s launch. The PM said that the mooted option of so-called “war bonds,” which have been floated by Andy Haldane, a former Bank of England economist who is advising Burnham, would “push interest rates higher at a time when one pound in every ten already goes on paying debt interest.”  He made no mention of the Canadian-backed multilateral Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which will fuel the impression that the U.K. will not join as a founding member at next week’s NATO summit, despite a push from Burnham’s team for London to sign up. The Treasury has allocated just £400 million in investment for the “Multilateral Defence Mechanism” – a proposal by the U.K., Finland and the Netherlands to provide financing for defense projects – around half of the DSRB’s entry requirement. Most pressing for Burnham, the small print contained in the DIP states that £4.7 billion must be found in savings at the next budget — likely from cuts to other departments — with £1.8 billion of that front-loaded to the current financial year. Allies of Burnham said he had been briefed on the DIP and backed the plan, but would not be drawn on how he planned to meet the targets which have eluded Starmer. One person close to him said that he “recognizes the rising demands on defence and has been clear on the need for defence investment which unambiguously backs British jobs and British industry.”

‘A mess’: EU Commission accused of overstepping on foreign policy Former top EU diplomat Josep Borrell tells POLITICO that the EEAS must take the lead on diplomacy and defense. By JACOPO BARIGAZZIin Brussels Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO Former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has delivered his sharpest public criticism yet of the European Commission’s growing role in diplomacy and defense, arguing that it is straying beyond its treaty powers and creating confusion over who speaks for Europe on the world stage. In an interview with POLITICO, Borrell said the increasingly overlapping roles of the Commission and the European External Action Service, the EU’s diplomatic arm, which he led from 2019 until late 2024, have created “quite a mess” within the bloc’s foreign policy machinery. “The Commission doesn’t speak representing the European Union; the Commission represents only the Commission,” Borrell said. The comments amount to the clearest public rebuke yet from a former EU top diplomat of a long-running institutional struggle that has simmered under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. While current and former officials have privately complained that the Commission has steadily expanded its diplomatic footprint, Borrell is the first former high representative to argue so directly that the EU’s executive branch, the guardian of the treaties, has actually crossed the line laid down in EU law. A veteran politician whose career included stints as Spain’s foreign minister and president of the European Parliament, Borrell preceded Kaja Kallas as head of the EEAS. Like Kallas, he also clashed with von der Leyen. Borrell has rarely shied away from strong opinions. He has often been an outspoken critic of Israel, accusing it of genocide and “carrying out the largest ethnic-cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”  The Commission’s outreach to Israel continues to anger Borrell. He pointed to the example of Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, who last week met Israeli officials just days after Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar cut ties with Kallas over reports that she had compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid-era South Africa.  Josep Borrell attends an interview in Kyiv on Nov. 11, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images This, Borrell said, shows that the Commission is overreaching and stepping on the EEAS’s toes. “With which authority a commissioner goes to Israel, to say that the EU and Israel love each other, and agree and celebrate the role of Israel on peace and stability, when at the same time the high representative of the EU for foreign policy is banned by Israel?” he said. He cited the EU treaty, which states that the Commission “shall ensure the Union’s external representation” but “with the exception of the common foreign and security policy.” For Borrell, there is a clear distinction between the external dimension of EU policies, which the Commission is in charge of, and EU foreign policy, which is in the hands of national capitals. “Certainly the Commission has policies that have an external dimension,” he said. “But this is one thing, and another thing is to pretend to set and define the position of the Union in the war against Iran, or on the Israel-Palestine conflict and other Middle East conflicts. This is not external relations. This is external policy … if you want to fix a common foreign policy position, then go to the Council” where the member countries have competence over foreign policy. Read more in our series on the battle over the EU’s diplomatic service:Why the EEAS is fighting for its futureParis and Berlin push to make EU foreign policy great — somehow Under fire Borrell was no stranger to criticism while serving as high representative — the formal title of the EU’s top diplomat — including after a controversial visit to Moscow in 2021, when he failed to push back against Sergey Lavrov when the Russian foreign minister accused EU leaders of lying about the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And like Kallas, Borrell often had a difficult relationship with von der Leyen. The Spanish Socialist frequently took a critical stance on Israel, while critics accused the German conservative Commission president of being too closely aligned with Tel Aviv. “It was not easy, but we tried to manage it,” he said. He recalled how, in 2021, von der Leyen and then-U.S. President Joe Biden launched the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council, a forum for transatlantic coordination on trade and technology. Ursula von der Leyen and Borrell hold a press conference in Brussels on Sept. 28, 2022. | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images “From the U.S. side it was chaired by the Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken. On the side of the European Union, the high representative was not even a member.” For Borrell, the same institutional tension is now emerging in defense policy. “If I were today the high representative and I would be sitting at a table where someone is saying, ‘I am going to build the European Defence Union,’ then I would feel a little bit uncomfortable,” he said. That’s because, in his view, the Commission is also overstepping its role on defense, which, like foreign affairs, is a competence of the member countries. In 2024, von der Leyen appointed the first-ever defense commissioner, former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius. In her mission letter, she tasked him with building a European Defence Union. This is further evidence that the Commission “has clearly expanded the will to be the one in charge of foreign and security policy,” Borrell said. In theory, Kubilius is “only a commissioner for the defense industry,” which is in line with the Commission’s powers over policies such as market regulation. But “apparently that’s not the case,” he said, referring to Kubilius’ mission of setting up a European Defence Union. “This is the task that the treaty gives to the high representative,” he said, pointing out the similarities between a European Defence Union and the Common Security and Defence Policy, the existing EU framework for defense and crisis management. “If you start building this institutional setting, the conflict is there, it’s unavoidable,” he said, arguing that the system “has to be clarified.” The right thing to do is that “defense policy is an intergovernmental policy. Because this is reality. The Commission cannot pretend to be a shadow Pentagon.” The Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

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