Ahmed Imtiaz is a qualified barrister working as a legal counsel for a global insights platform in London. He was a candidate for Westminster Council in the May local elections.
Fiscal restraint is not merely a preference; it is a necessity. Britain is operating with a stubborn deficit, elevated borrowing costs, and a bond market that has grown increasingly intolerant of government expansion. In such an environment, the state must shrink, not grow. Public spending must be disciplined, not indulgent. Almost every department should be asked to do more with less.
But defence is the exception. It is the one area where reducing spending is not prudence but negligence. And that is precisely why John Healey’s retreat from his own pledge of raising defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 is so alarming.
Healey originally set the 3 per cent target as a stepping‑stone toward NATO’s new 3.5 per cent benchmark for 2035. It was meant to signal seriousness, urgency, and a recognition that Europe is entering a more dangerous era. Healey has abandoned the very commitment he had used to define his tenure at Defence. Nothing fundamental has changed in the global environment that would justify such a reversal. The threats have not diminished. The urgency has not eased. The fiscal situation was already difficult when Healey made the pledge. The only thing that changed was his job title.
This is the problem. Defence spending, the bedrock of national security, has become a political instrument rather than a strategic priority. Healey’s resignation from the Starmer government was widely interpreted as a principled stand. He argued that the Prime Minister lacked seriousness on defence and was unwilling to commit to the spending levels required to meet NATO’s expectations. Yet his subsequent behaviour suggests something different. If Healey truly believed 3 per cent by 2030 was essential, why abandon it the moment he became Chancellor? Why retreat from a target he himself set? Why dilute a commitment he once framed as indispensable to Britain’s credibility?
The defence pledge, once a matter of principle, now looks like a tool of political positioning. Britain cannot afford this kind of behaviour. Defence is not a political football. It is the foundation of sovereignty.
The deeper issue is that Britain’s defence posture still rests on assumptions that no longer hold. Yes, the UK has a special relationship with the United States. But we live in a world where American foreign policy is increasingly unpredictable, and where that unpredictability now extends to allies, not just adversaries. Recently, Washington curtailed joint military exercises with South Korea at short notice, and Trump has renewed his interest in a fresh summit with Kim Jong Un despite North Korea’s continued weapons advances. Trump has also repeatedly revived talk of annexing Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, and of making Canada another NATO ally, the “51st state,” rhetoric serious enough that a Republican congressman introduced legislation to formalise a Greenland annexation and that Denmark’s prime minister has had to publicly state that you cannot simply annex another country. The technology relationship is no steadier: this summer Washington briefly suspended foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models under export control rules, before restoring it later, a small but telling example of how quickly access to critical American technology can be switched off for allies as well as adversaries.
European governments have drawn the obvious conclusion, and it is worth Britain paying attention to what they are actually doing, not just saying. Spain has ruled out the F-35 altogether, choosing to put its money into the Eurofighter and the pan-European FCAS programme instead, and has committed the large majority of its defence budget increase to European suppliers. France’s government is migrating millions of civil service computers off Windows onto Linux and off Microsoft Teams onto homegrown alternatives, citing digital sovereignty concerns explicitly. Local authorities in Denmark and Spain, including Aarhus, have been moving public infrastructure onto European cloud providers such as Nextcloud and the German host Hetzner, rather than continuing to depend on US hyperscalers. None of this is anti-American sentiment for its own sake. It is closer to the ordinary business logic of not putting all of one’s critical dependencies with a single supplier whose priorities can shift overnight.
The UK’s special relationship with Washington remains real and valuable, and nothing here is an argument for abandoning it. But it should not be mistaken for a substitute for our own capability. Given how unpredictable the current administration’s approach to allies and adversaries alike has proven to be, a Britain that cannot properly defend itself, and that has let its own defence-industrial base wither, is a Britain with fewer options, not more.
That is also why defence spending should be understood as an investment rather than simply a cost, in a way that most other spending increases are not. Money spent well on British shipyards, munitions factories and defence technology firms builds an industrial base that pays it back, in jobs, in exports, and in leverage. A UK that visibly rearms is a UK that can credibly sell to the Gulf states, South Korea, Japan and other partners who are themselves looking to diversify away from total dependence on the United States, and who are not going to buy from a country that will not properly fund its own forces. Russia and China are not, and cannot be, alternatives for these partners. That gap is Britain’s to fill, if it chooses to.
The 3 per cent target is not arbitrary. It is the minimum required for Britain to meet NATO’s new 3.5 per cent benchmark by 2035, modernise its armed forces, rebuild munitions stockpiles, invest in cyber defence and AI‑enabled systems, expand naval capabilities, and support allies facing existential threats.
Britain needs a government that treats defence as the foundation of national strength. A government that recognises that sovereignty is not cheap, but the cost of losing it is far greater. The 3 per cent target should not be abandoned. It should be the baseline for Britain’s return to serious defence leadership.
Ahmed Imtiaz is a qualified barrister working as a legal counsel for a global insights platform in London. He was a candidate for Westminster Council in the May local elections.
Fiscal restraint is not merely a preference; it is a necessity. Britain is operating with a stubborn deficit, elevated borrowing costs, and a bond market that has grown increasingly intolerant of government expansion. In such an environment, the state must shrink, not grow. Public spending must be disciplined, not indulgent. Almost every department should be asked to do more with less.
But defence is the exception. It is the one area where reducing spending is not prudence but negligence. And that is precisely why John Healey’s retreat from his own pledge of raising defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 is so alarming.
Healey originally set the 3 per cent target as a stepping‑stone toward NATO’s new 3.5 per cent benchmark for 2035. It was meant to signal seriousness, urgency, and a recognition that Europe is entering a more dangerous era. Healey has abandoned the very commitment he had used to define his tenure at Defence. Nothing fundamental has changed in the global environment that would justify such a reversal. The threats have not diminished. The urgency has not eased. The fiscal situation was already difficult when Healey made the pledge. The only thing that changed was his job title.
This is the problem. Defence spending, the bedrock of national security, has become a political instrument rather than a strategic priority. Healey’s resignation from the Starmer government was widely interpreted as a principled stand. He argued that the Prime Minister lacked seriousness on defence and was unwilling to commit to the spending levels required to meet NATO’s expectations. Yet his subsequent behaviour suggests something different. If Healey truly believed 3 per cent by 2030 was essential, why abandon it the moment he became Chancellor? Why retreat from a target he himself set? Why dilute a commitment he once framed as indispensable to Britain’s credibility?
The defence pledge, once a matter of principle, now looks like a tool of political positioning. Britain cannot afford this kind of behaviour. Defence is not a political football. It is the foundation of sovereignty.
The deeper issue is that Britain’s defence posture still rests on assumptions that no longer hold. Yes, the UK has a special relationship with the United States. But we live in a world where American foreign policy is increasingly unpredictable, and where that unpredictability now extends to allies, not just adversaries. Recently, Washington curtailed joint military exercises with South Korea at short notice, and Trump has renewed his interest in a fresh summit with Kim Jong Un despite North Korea’s continued weapons advances. Trump has also repeatedly revived talk of annexing Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, and of making Canada another NATO ally, the “51st state,” rhetoric serious enough that a Republican congressman introduced legislation to formalise a Greenland annexation and that Denmark’s prime minister has had to publicly state that you cannot simply annex another country. The technology relationship is no steadier: this summer Washington briefly suspended foreign access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models under export control rules, before restoring it later, a small but telling example of how quickly access to critical American technology can be switched off for allies as well as adversaries.
European governments have drawn the obvious conclusion, and it is worth Britain paying attention to what they are actually doing, not just saying. Spain has ruled out the F-35 altogether, choosing to put its money into the Eurofighter and the pan-European FCAS programme instead, and has committed the large majority of its defence budget increase to European suppliers. France’s government is migrating millions of civil service computers off Windows onto Linux and off Microsoft Teams onto homegrown alternatives, citing digital sovereignty concerns explicitly. Local authorities in Denmark and Spain, including Aarhus, have been moving public infrastructure onto European cloud providers such as Nextcloud and the German host Hetzner, rather than continuing to depend on US hyperscalers. None of this is anti-American sentiment for its own sake. It is closer to the ordinary business logic of not putting all of one’s critical dependencies with a single supplier whose priorities can shift overnight.
The UK’s special relationship with Washington remains real and valuable, and nothing here is an argument for abandoning it. But it should not be mistaken for a substitute for our own capability. Given how unpredictable the current administration’s approach to allies and adversaries alike has proven to be, a Britain that cannot properly defend itself, and that has let its own defence-industrial base wither, is a Britain with fewer options, not more.
That is also why defence spending should be understood as an investment rather than simply a cost, in a way that most other spending increases are not. Money spent well on British shipyards, munitions factories and defence technology firms builds an industrial base that pays it back, in jobs, in exports, and in leverage. A UK that visibly rearms is a UK that can credibly sell to the Gulf states, South Korea, Japan and other partners who are themselves looking to diversify away from total dependence on the United States, and who are not going to buy from a country that will not properly fund its own forces. Russia and China are not, and cannot be, alternatives for these partners. That gap is Britain’s to fill, if it chooses to.
The 3 per cent target is not arbitrary. It is the minimum required for Britain to meet NATO’s new 3.5 per cent benchmark by 2035, modernise its armed forces, rebuild munitions stockpiles, invest in cyber defence and AI‑enabled systems, expand naval capabilities, and support allies facing existential threats.
Britain needs a government that treats defence as the foundation of national strength. A government that recognises that sovereignty is not cheap, but the cost of losing it is far greater. The 3 per cent target should not be abandoned. It should be the baseline for Britain’s return to serious defence leadership.