Keir Starmer Accused of Leaving UK 'In Peril' as NATO Chief Slams Treasury 'Vandalism'

Keir Starmer is facing fierce criticism over the UK's readiness for conflict after former Nato secretary general Lord George Robertson warned in London on Tuesday that Britain is 'not safe' and that the country's national security is 'in peril' under the current government's spending priorities.

Lord Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who oversaw Tony Blair's landmark Strategic Defence Review in the late 1990s, is due to use a set-piece lecture to accuse the Prime Minister of allowing welfare spending and Whitehall caution to hollow out the country's defences.

His intervention lands as ministers struggle to agree a long-promised 10‑year defence investment plan and as global tensions, including war involving Iran, sharpen questions about the UK's ability to fight a major war.

In advance excerpts of the speech, reported by the Financial Times, Lord Robertson claims the UK is 'woefully unprepared for warfare,' blaming what he calls an 'ever-expanding welfare budget' and 'corrosive complacency' at the top of government.

He argues that the recent Iran conflict should serve as a 'rude wake-up call' to ministers who, he says, have grown too comfortable making bold statements about security without putting hard cash behind them.

He is expected to tell his audience: 'We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe... Britain's national security and safety is in peril.'

Lord Robertson's Nato Warning To Keir Starmer

The heart of Lord Robertson's charge against Keir Starmer is that the Prime Minister's rhetoric on defence does not match the reality of spending decisions. He told the FT there was a gulf between the promises issuing from No 10 and the numbers emerging from the Treasury, accusing Starmer of being 'not willing to make the necessary investment.'

In the lecture, he is set to go further, singling out officials in the Treasury as obstructing serious rearmament. According to the published extracts, he brands 'non-military experts in the Treasury' guilty of 'vandalism' and delivers a stark line that will be seized on by hawks across Westminster, 'We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.'

He also accuses the wider political class of looking the other way. Britain's leadership, he will say, is gripped by a 'corrosive complacency,' content to 'pay lip service' to growing 'bright red signals of danger' while failing even to start the 'promised national conversation about defence.'

A further strand of Robertson's warning concerns the reliability of the United States as Europe's ultimate security guarantor. Without naming Donald Trump directly, he refers to the president's repeated broadsides against Nato and says, 'Recent days have shown that the role and priorities of the United States have shifted, and will never be the same again.' The implication is clear enough. If Washington can no longer be fully relied on, then mid-ranking powers such as the UK must assume more responsibility for their own defence.

Defence Spending, Treasury Tensions And The Keir Starmer Gap

Behind the public argument over Keir Starmer's stance lies a grinding internal battle over money. The government has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, then to 3 per cent in the next parliament, with an eye to a Nato target of 3.5 per cent by 2035. Those figures sound muscular on paper. The question is how to fund them.

The 10‑year defence investment blueprint intended to give teeth to the latest Strategic Defence Review was due last autumn but has still not appeared. According to the Financial Times, there is a gap of around £28 billion in existing plans, and the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury and Downing Street have reached a stand-off over how to close it without shredding Starmer's wider fiscal rules.

In the Commons on Monday, Starmer insisted that the government was 'working to finalise' the plan but said he would not repeat what he called the mistakes of previous administrations by publishing 'unfunded and not deliverable' defence programmes. That line is clearly aimed at reassuring markets and centrist voters, yet it does little to satisfy those warning that delay itself carries strategic risk.

A government spokesman pushed back against Robertson's charge that Britain is leaving itself exposed. 'We are delivering on the Strategic Defence Review to meet the threats we face,' he said. 'It is backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, with a total of over £270 billion being invested across this Parliament.'

The spokesman added that ministers were 'finalising our defence investment plan that we will publish as soon as possible, putting the best kit and technology into the hands of our forces, rebuilding British industry to make defence an engine for growth and doubling down on our own commitment to Nato.'