LATIKA M BOURKE: Keir Starmer goes all in on ‘new nuclear age’ citing China, Russia and North Korea

Outgoing UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has backed nuclear deterrence as the UK’s key military capability, allocating a whopping £63 billion ($AUD120b) to nuclear submarines, in a move endorsed as “reassuring” for Australia’s future AUKUS boats.

But Sir Keir’s final act in the job, unveiling his defence investment plan ahead of next week’s NATO summit in Turkey, fell well short of US President Donald Trump’s demands.

And he will leave office with defence spending at a lower level than Australia’s, when measured a a proportion of GDP.

Spending £300 billion on defence over the next four years, but with just £15 billion of that constituting newly allocated spending, Sir Keir’s legacy will be a spending target will hit just 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2028.

This falls well short of comparable NATO allies, who are ramping up spending to meet the agreed goal of 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035.

MPs, including the former defence secretary John Healey, who quit saying Sir Keir’s defence funding plans would leave Britain less safe, demanded a clear timeline for when the UK would hit 3 per cent.

Sir Keir left that for his successor, saying it must be the “number one priority” of the next spending review and that the UK was on a trajectory to reach 3 per cent in the next parliament, of which he is unlikely to be a part, with Andy Burnham set to be crowned Labour party leader in mid-July.

It is unclear if Mr Burnham, the PM in waiting,will endorse the defence review, but before releasing it to the public Sir Keir hosted NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who later endorsed the spending levels.

Sir Keir did not mention AUKUS in his speech and nor was he asked about the project by the British press his office selected to ask him questions.

Sir Keir’s long-awaited defence spending plans cut heavily into other parts of the navy including scrapping destroyer warships.

Other capabilities were downgraded in favour of drones and autonomous systems and ultimately in favour of nuclear capabilities.

The defence investment plan cited a“new nuclear age” and worsening security environment characterised by “Russia’s aggression, China’s nuclear expansion, and North Korea’s destabilising weapons programme.”

The UK is one of three NATO countries to field nuclear weapons and the only one to declare them to the trans-Atlantic alliance. It delivers its nuclear deterrent through its Vanguard-class submarines and will buy American F35s to deliver them also by air.

Of the £63 billion to be spent on nuclear submarines, £47 billion will fund boats, including maintenance and infrastructure, £13 billion on the warheads, £1.7 billion on nuclear fuels and £290 million on skills.

The sum is the single biggest spend on military capability after salaries and pensions, and dwarfs the £28 billion spent on air.

Professor John Bew who served as foreign policy advisor in Np. 10 and was in the role when AUKUS was signed in 2021, told The Nightly that it was good news for Australia.

“The Defence Investment Plan should reassure on the AUKUS front. The nuclear and submarine enterprises have been granted significant resources,” Professor Bew from King’s College London’s Department of War Studies said.

The Chair of the parliamentary group on AUKUS, Labour MP Michelle Scrogham, who represents Barrow and Furness where the AUKUS shipyards are located, said the priorities were right.

“I welcome this Defence Investment Plan which has prioritised our nuclear deterrent and submarine programs,” Ms Scrogham was quoted as saying by The West Morland Gazette.

“This Government has once again reinforced its commitment to Barrow and Furness with more than £63 billion [of] investment in our submarine programme over the next four years, delivering Dreadnought and up to 12 SSN-AUKUS boats along with the upgrades to infrastructure needed to get us to a drumbeat of a boat every 18 months.”

The UK’s attack boats are called the Astute class. The Vanguards or ballistic missile submarines will be replaced by Dreadnoughts and the SSN-AUKUS will follow on from the Astutes.

The UK’s submarine production has been woefully behind schedule and overrun with costs. Of the seven Astutes, first commissioned in 1997, BAE has delivered just five of the seven.

The UK says it will cut steel on the first AUKUS boat next year and plans to build up to 12. It will upgrade the Clyde naval base in Scotland where the Vanguards are based as well as build three floating docks at Faslane so all boats can be received and maintained as well as enabling out of water engineering.

The Derby Rolls-Royce facility where the submarines’ nuclear reactors are built, will also be expanded.

The UK also said it wanted to wanted to “maintain a persistent military presence” in the Indo-Pacific.

The Royal Navy was embarrassed when its only operational submarine, HMS Anson surfaced in Australia on an AUKUS visit at the time Israel and the United States launched their war on Iran.

The UK took weeks to send a single warship to the region and had to call it back almost immediately after it broke down.