Defence secretary confident Burnham will resource the military

Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, has told the Guardian he doesn’t have “a shred of doubt” that incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, will ensure the military gets the resources it needs.

Jarvis, whose donors include Labour Together millionaires and recruitment firms PSD and Odgers Berndtson (who are linked to private healthcare), says he is confident the PM-in-waiting “values national security”.

He said:

What I absolutely will want to see is that in the next spending review we commit the resources to evidence the trajectory to 3.5% [of GDP].

I’ve known Andy for a very long time, and I have not a shred of doubt that as prime minister he will make sure that we’ve got the resources that we need at a point of challenge.

Jarvis is clearly not satisfied with the 2.7% of GDP by 2030 target, as laid out in Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan last week. This target is already up from 2.3% when Starmer’s government took office, and is higher than at any time during the last 30 years.

Defence secretary to attend NATO summit

Keen to stay on as defence secretary in Burnham’s cabinet, Jarvis will travel to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday with Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper.

He said he will personally reassure his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, that the UK will meet its NATO pledge of 3.5% of GDP by 2035, up from the 2.7% target laid out last week.

A belligerent Donald Trump is expected to demand his allies — cough, or as some might say vassal states — spend more on military spending at the NATO summit this week.

For the Americans, the fiscal pressures facing Britain and other NATO allies are beside the point. What matters is that European countries are spending more, and much of that money flows straight back to US defence giants like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics. Together they account for nearly half of global arms revenue.

NATO’s deputy supreme allied commander Europe, Sir John Stringer, told Bloomberg recently that European NATO allies had mostly replaced the assets that the US had cut from its rescue plans in case of a war in Europe.

The US signalled on 3 June that it would no longer supply an aircraft carrier and support ships, aerial refueling planes, and dozens of fighter jets, among other assets, to the continent.

Will Burnham just be another Jarvis, bootlicking the USA? It looks like it.

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