How Keir Starmer is turning UK into second-rate European power

The reason isn’t to do with Keir Starmer’s diplomatic efforts. In that regard, Starmer’s team can be quite proud of what they have achieved. They earned Donald Trump’s ear and even his respect in a visit that outdid French President Emmanuel Macron’s own attempt to court the mercurial new US President. Starmer has done a reasonable job cementing that diplomatic leadership into a seemingly influential position on the settlement in Ukraine.

Exemplified by the judicious use of an invitation from the King, Starmer is cashing in on hard-won British soft power and a willingness and ability to deploy hard power at a reasonable scale to secure diplomatic victories. But we can’t fake it much longer – Britain’s influence is being dragged down by our stagnant economy.

Lost decades on defence

Our new report for the Henry Jackson Society, Strategic Security, shows how Britain is in no position to counter authoritarian threats, be they from Russia or China, without economic growth. Two or 2.5 per cent of GDP spent on defence quickly becomes irrelevant in the face of a lost decade when spending could and should have been growing closer to the 4 per cent achieved by the US, and another lost decade which this government is driving us toward.

In raising taxes, increasing public sector pay and promising to regulate everything from landlords to the Premier League, Starmer seems not only unwilling to learn the lessons from the last ten years in Britain – he’s also unwilling to learn the much clearer lessons from the Biden administration. The report shows how Britain’s migration strategy – shifting production from capital investment to cheap labour – is driving down innovation, investment, and income per capita.

The upshot for defence is even more profound when you consider two key factors hidden beneath the GDP statistics: military procurement and energy costs. The UK has left itself without the ability to fully supply and repair the military equipment it operates.

The explanation lies in energy costs. As the most zealous and naïve convert to the international drive for net zero, Britain has achieved accelerated deindustrialisation and the world’s highest average consumer and producer energy costs. That 2.5 per cent of GDP spent on defence will not stretch anywhere near as far as it should when we have artificially expensive energy and are at the mercy Donald Trump to keep our military hardware in operation.

Net-zero virtue signalling

Starmer belongs to a breed of liberal elite (in particular a legal elite), which has largely died out on the global stage since the pandemic. The days where central European powers are spending large portions of their defence budget on ‘decarbonising’ their main battle tanks are over.

Yet Starmer’s government, most notoriously Ed Miliband, persists with the notion that this kind of net-zero virtue signalling is good for Britain. There may, though it is by no means clear, have been a time when decarbonising quickly (as Britain has done) would have earnt us international kudos, “credibility”, and, to use the technical term, brownie points – but that time is gone.

The only example this government is setting to the world is how to grind the productive parts of an economy into the dust while feeding the remains to an unprecedently large and unproductive state sector.

To that apparent end, we are shutting off the supply of North Sea gas knowing full well that Russia is the producer most likely to fill that gap. Not only will we cut jobs and have to buy more of our energy from abroad, but we could fund Russian aggression and its oligarchy at the same time.

Solar power in rainy Wales

Billions are being spent subsidising solar power in Britain, enriching those best placed to scoop up taxpayers money. The unsubsidised private sector, which has to put its own money where its mouth is, is investing in projects like Xlinks, which will bring solar power from the sunny Moroccan drylands to the UK via a giant underwater cable, and supply 8 per cent of the UK’s power in the process.

Yet the British state chooses to subsidise solar projects in rainy Wales, and wind projects without reliable grid access to the consumers who need energy. Our bloated state prefers looking good to getting good value for the taxpayer.

The handover of Chagos and the endless talk of reparations with Caribbean states speak to the luxurious moral decadence that has consumed the British state, where image is all that seems to matter. That’s what drove Labour to tax non-doms into leaving the country. In fact, with more than 10,000 millionaires having left in the last year, Starmer’s Britain is second only to Communist China for the number of high net-worth and wealth creators fleeing its shores.

UK needs hard power

Making us all poorer didn’t matter to the British state, or Labour, so long as they looked good doing it – although making businesswoman Akshata Murty, Rishi Sunak’s wife, look bad was a close second priority.

This decadence must be reversed or else Britain will soon become a second-rate power in Europe. This month has shown what Britain might be able to achieve if only it still had the hard power to back it up.

The HJS report makes clear recommendations for the regulatory, immigration, energy and tax reforms that are required if Britain is to remain a player on the global stage, remain useful to our allies and become capable again of leading deployments. It really is obvious – we must grow and face down our enemies, or resign ourselves to decline. It’s clear which path Starmer intends to choose.

Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE is senior director at the New Lines Institute and former reservist in the Parachute Regiment