Keir Starmer faces charges of leaving Britain ‘unsafe’ today as a former Nato chief and Labour minister condemns his ‘corrosive complacency’.
Lord Robertson will use a speech later to accuse the PM of failing to act with the country ‘under attack’, insisting the Iran war should be a ‘rude wake-up call’.
In a devastating assessment, he will warn the Government is prioritising ‘the ever-expanding welfare budget’ over essential security.
The peer – who helped write Labour’s Strategic Defence Review last year – has been backed by military chiefs who said the UK could no longer rely on the ‘US cavalry coming to bail us out’.
Lord Robertson was a defence secretary under Tony Blair from May 1997 until October 1999. He then became a Nato secretary general until 2004.
He also helped write Labour’s Strategic Defence Review last year, and will use a lecture today in Salisbury to accuse ‘non-military experts in the Treasury’ of ‘vandalism’ in prioritising benefits over defence.
He will say: ‘We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.’
And he is expected to identify a ‘corrosive complacency in Britain’s political leadership’ and say ‘lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the red signals of danger – but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started’.
With Labour still to publish its long-awaited Defence Investment Plan, the peer will accuse Sir Keir of being unwilling ‘to make the necessary investment’ – something the Daily Mail has highlighted in its Don’t Leave Britain Defenceless campaign.
He will add: ‘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 intervention comes after Vladimir Putin last week sent a Russian warship to escort two of his shadow fleet vessels through the English Channel.
Sir Keir had previously trumpeted plans to seize sanctioned Russian vessels in British waters.
But the peer is expected to pour scorn on Chancellor Rachel Reeves for using ‘a mere 40 words on defence in over an hour’ in her Budget speech last year, while last month in her Spring Statement ‘she used none’.
And Lord Robertson will cite the UK’s inability to deploy more than one Royal Navy warship to the Mediterranean within the first fortnight of the Iran war as an example of the ‘parlous state’ of our current defences.
He will also warn that the UK faces ‘crises in logistics, engineering, cyber, ammunition, training and medical resources’.
General Sir Richard Barrons – another author of the SDR – agreed with Lord Robertson that ‘there’s an enormous gap between where we have to be to keep the country safe in the world we now live in and where we actually are’.
He warned the future will involve ‘a European Nato doing much more and the US doing much less’, and the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were ‘too small and too undernourished’.
‘The US cavalry is not coming to bail us out now,’ he added.
Kemi Badenoch has accused Sir Keir of posturing on the world stage over the Middle East war while failing to rearm the nation.
She said she ‘completely agrees’ with Lord Robertson.
‘It was exactly what I told Starmer in Parliament yesterday and said in my speech to Defence experts at the weekend.
‘We need to get serious. The Conservatives would restore the two child benefit cap and repurpose funds from net zero projects to invest in our military.
‘Meanwhile the government have NO plan and, as Lord Robertson points out, Rachel Reeves had only 40 words on defence in her Budget and none in the Spring Statement. You can’t trust Labour on defence.’
A Government spokesman said last night: ‘We are delivering on the Strategic Defence Review to meet the threats we face.’
