After many months of uncertainty, Prime Minister Keir Starmer finally broke the silence just before his crucial meeting with US President Donald Trump (which took place on Thursday 27 February), and announced an increase in British military spending.

Compared to the spending plan presented in April 2024 by the previous Prime Minister, the Conservative Rishi Sunak, the target of 2.5% of GDP will be reached three years earlier. The target will now be reached with the budget for the 2027/28 financial year, instead of 2030/31.

The budget will already increase next year, but we will have to wait for the Spring budget and the associated Spending Review to find out how much we will have to wait for (at least) the next 3 financial years.

The Prime Minister further specified that funds for Intelligence will also continue to grow, and will be counted within Defence expenditure, generating a total that, starting from April 2027, will therefore be 2.6%. We should specify here that this is in line with NATO's indications on what is included in defence spending, and the 2024 ‘Sunak plan’ also calculated both the Armed Forces budget and spending on intelligence, assistance to Ukraine, defence pensions and the Integrated Security Fund.

This level of expenditure will at least be maintained, and probably increased further, in accordance with the declared intention of reaching 3% during the next legislature, i.e. in the first half of the 2030s. NATO is already informally referring to this 3% as ‘the new 2%’.

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