Spending billions on defence won’t restore stability – CND
CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt looks at how defence spending factored in the Autumn Budget.
The new British Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, talked a great deal about how Labour’s budget would restore stability. Whilst there were some positive shifts away from the previous government’s economic priorities – some investment for hospitals and schools, raising the minimum wage – when it comes to defence, Labour is continuing with the Conservatives’ spending priorities and escalatory policies. Far from creating stability, pouring billions more into the military and replacing Trident will only exacerbate domestic and global insecurity.
Announcing an increase in military spending by £2.9bn, it’s clear Labour’s priority is getting Britain to the 2.5% GDP pledge made by Rishi Sunak in April and reaffirmed in the Labour’s Strategic Defence Review which is a ‘root and branch’ defence review ‘within the trajectory to 2.5%’ spending. This increase is on top of year-on-year, inflation-busting increases that have nothing to do with defending the British population and everything to do with following a US foreign policy that risks dragging Britain into further wars and nuclear confrontation.
The government had already pledged to continue funding the crisis in Ukraine to the tune of £3bn every year for ‘as long as it takes’, a conflict which threatens to escalate into an all-out war between NATO and Russia.
If the new Chancellor really wanted to get control of public spending, she would only need to end the Trident replacement programme. Not only is this driving nuclear proliferation, it is draining Britain’s public finances with its out-of-control spending.
According to a House of Commons Library Briefing, ‘The cost of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent’, published in August, ‘…the Public Accounts Committee expressed concern over the stability of the plan and the ability of the department to control costs in its largest programmes, including Dreadnought. It suggested, with concern, that the MOD views the contingency fund “as a blank cheque, freeing it from the need to control costs”.’
Meanwhile, 4.3 million children – that’s 30% of all children in Britain – continue to live in poverty because of Labour’s refusal to remove the two child benefit cap – a policy that would lift a quarter of a million children out of poverty. And, over the past ten years, 250,000 older people have died from the cold because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes. A failure to restore the universal fuel allowance will continue to result in such deaths.
We know that these ruthless economic priorities are shaped by Britain’s military and nuclear adherence to US military and economic priorities, enshrined by the Mutual Defence Agreement – recently extended indefinitely – as well as Britain’s membership to NATO. Our campaigning to end this so-called ‘special relationship’ has never been more critical, and central to this is scrapping Trident and its replacement.
- Sophie Bolt is the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). You can follow Kate on Twitter/X; and follow the CND on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
- This article was originally published in the CND Campaign Magazine, November 2025 Edition.
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