Credit : ar.inspiredpencil.com
Britain’s defence spending is to rise from £62.2 Bn/y (2025/6) to £73.5 Bn/y in 2028/9 – an increase of 18% growth in 3 years. We stand 6th in global rankings of amount spent on arms (slightly higher that Ukraine, which is engaged in a life and death struggle with Russia, which stands third). We take 18th place in terms of defence spending as a % of GDP.
Predictably, there is a hysterical too-little-too-late reaction from the conservative opposition and journalists, and few questions of “Where is the money going to come from?”
The world is currently wallowing in a good old-fashioned arms race. Academic opinion is split over whether arms races always end in war, or just sometimes.
If we want a more peaceful, sustainable and happy world, we need to de-escalate military spending on a global basis, by international agreement. There is a detailed breakdown of the advantages of this approach here: https://morepeaceful.world/escalation-or-de-escalation/ Spoiler: de-escalation beats escalation in terms of saving money and producing a more secure world. Escalation wins in terms of extracting money from politicians.
What we really need is a comparison between the financial costs of the UK military budget and the financial cost to the taxpayer of the time that Government officials and Ministers spend in talking constructively to their opposite numbers in Russia (and any other countries that right wing journalists think might want to invade or otherwise attack us).
We need to do a Freedom of Information request for that.
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