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Keir Starmer will say the UK and Europe need to step up their commitments to Nato and avoid the risk of overdependence on the US for defence, as he sets out one of the main planks of his foreign policy vision on Saturday.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, the prime minister will warn against the idea of the UK turning inwards on security, instead calling for a focus on what he will call the “sleeping giant” of shared European defence capabilities.
The speech warns that voters will need to be primed to expect greater spending on defence, and to be told the reasons why, or face the “peddlers of easy answers” such as Reform UK and the Greens risking national security.
Downing Street officials stress that Starmer’s call is not being made over fears that the US is no longer committed to Nato, and is more a response to demands from Washington that European nations commit more to defence.
The speech will, however, be seen in the context of last year’s main US address to the conference in Germany, by Donald Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance. He used his speech to lambast European leaders for supposedly blocking free speech and being soft on migration, questioning whether such values were compatible with a US guarantee of mutual security.
Trump has regularly questioned the value of Nato, including the claim in January that European nations “stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines” while supporting US troops in Afghanistan, comments that prompted a rare direct rebuke from Starmer.
In extracts of the speech released in advance by No 10, Starmer said he was setting out “a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald US withdrawal, but answers the call for more burden-sharing in full, and remakes the ties that have served us so well”.
In another pushback against the politics of Brexit, he condemned UK politicians who would rather avoid ties with Europe, after the Conservatives expressed scepticism about some defence-based links.
“We are not the Britain of the Brexit years any more,” the speech says. “Because we know that, in dangerous times, we would not take control by turning inward – we would surrender it. And I won’t let that happen.
“There is no British security without Europe, and no European security without Britain. That is the lesson of history – and it is today’s reality too.”
Calling for better cooperation on defence procurement, the speech says the UK should help create a new era for the continent.
“As I see it – Europe is a sleeping giant. Our economies dwarf Russia’s, 10 times over,” Starmer will say.
“We have huge defence capabilities. Yet, too often, all of this has added up to less than the sum of its parts. Across Europe, fragmented industrial planning and long, drawn out procurement mechanisms have led to gaps in some areas – and massive duplication in others.”
Ministers must, he said, “level with the public and build consent for the decisions we will have to take to keep us all safe”.
The PM will go on: “Because, if we don’t, the peddlers of easy answers on the extreme left and the extreme right are ready. They will offer their solutions instead. It’s striking that the different ends of the spectrum share so much. Soft on Russia and weak on Nato – if not outright opposed.
“The future they offer is one of division and then capitulation. The lamps would go out across Europe once again. But we will not let that happen.”
