The UK is “under daily attack” from Russia and needs to wake up to the threat following “profoundly dangerous” defence spending delays, Sir Keir Starmer’s military advisers have warned.
George Robertson and Sir Richard Barrons, two of the authors of Sir Keir’s strategic defence review, sounded the alarm as they gave evidence to MPs on the defence select committee.
Sir Keir is expected to come under pressure from Donald Trump to make further commitments on defence at the Nato summit in Ankara, which begins on Tuesday.
His long-awaited defence investment plan was finally published last week after a delay of a year, but left a multibillion-pound black hole in spending that the next PM will have to fill.
Lord Robertson told MPs: “There is a degree of complacency in the country as a whole, which I think is very, very dangerous, and people need to be woken up. My concern is that it’s not coming from the top, so when I asked the chief of defence staff why we’re not letting the public know what the threats are, his response was ‘We don’t want to alarm people’.”
He added: “I think we need to alarm people, because … we are under daily attack at the present moment, and that will be ramped up.”
Russia sees the UK as its “principal main adversary at the moment”, he added.
He also revealed that he had asked for a meeting with Nigel Farage, as the leader of Reform UK, to discuss defence, in December and was still waiting.
Last year, the then defence secretary John Healey said Russia was “attacking the UK daily” in cyberspace as part of 90,000 assaults on Britain’s defence systems linked to different states.
Appearing before the same committee, Sir Richard said: “For me, by far the most dangerous consequence of the year’s delay is that the prime minister says Russia could attack Nato by 2030.
“And we essentially lost a year of mobilising for that, and that is profoundly dangerous.”
Lord Robertson also predicted that “relations may well be quite frosty” when Sir Keir sits beside President Trump in Ankara on Wednesday.
The US and other allies “are dismayed” at the delays to the UK’s defence spending, he said.
Earlier, Kemi Badenoch said the government should stop worrying about Donald Trump’s “hurty words” and focus instead on funding defence.
“I think we need to get our act together and stop complaining about how President Trump is speaking about us, and the hurty words,” she said.
“Of course, I would prefer if he made those comments in private, but the priority right now should be in finding the funding, not complaining about the criticism.”
She also said that Mr Trump’s public criticism was nothing new, adding: “The funding for Nato, or rather I should say the underfunding for Nato defence spending, is something that America’s presidents have said repeatedly over the years.
“What is unique about Donald Trump is the way he says it, but the point that he has made is not one that is new.
“I think that his belligerence on this issue has been one of the reasons why countries like Germany have increased their spending to 3.7 per cent. Poland is spending about 4.8 per cent. They’ve made these increases in the last two years, as far as I can see.
“What have we been doing in that period of time? We have been paying for your welfare.”
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