Could Ukraine define Starmer?

If the government’s first Budget boxed in on tax, then Ukraine could seal it for them on spending.

Europe’s reckoning over the way the war in Ukraine ends could come to define the Starmer government even more than the way it started - and dragged on - came to impact the last Conservative ones.

Increasing defence spending has moved from being an announcement without a timeline to being the first issue of business for the upcoming Spending Review, with huge implications for all other government departments and – potentially – Labour’s prospect for a second term.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s message to Europe could not have been clearer last week. Effectively – and for the first time in 80 years – the continent is ultimately on its own. The US has eyes only for China and the coming economic, technological, geopolitical (and potentially real) battles brewing on either side of the Pacific. It is time, as far as President Trump is concerned, for the other side of the Atlantic to stop hiding behind the US for its defence and to look after itself.

To underline the disdain of the new administration not just to the European Union as an institution but to the entire continent, Vice President JD Vance flew to Europe to tell the Munich Security Conference that he is more concerned by “the danger within” of Europe’s approach to free speech and culture than to external threats like China or Russia.

That a US Vice President could say this while a European nation a couple of hours away on Air Force Two has been fighting for its very existence as a result of Russian aggression and not debates over free speech, was extraordinary. But to underline the scale of Europe’s exposure, its leaders this week found themselves talking to each other in Paris about the future of Ukraine while US negotiators literally went over their heads to meet the Russians directly in Saudi Arabia and draw lines on the map of Europe without them. European nations are now the true Flyover States.

However bitter a geopolitical pill that might be, the domestic political pill could be even worse. With almost no room for manoeuvre already on public spending, real and painful choices may now be needed to find the cash for extra defence spending, with public opinion split.

Former Foreign Secretary William Hague warns today that Starmer and Reeves will have to tackle the UK’s fast growing sickness benefits spending, get even more serious about NHS productivity reforms and – most dauntingly – take on the pensions triple lock.

Meanwhile, LabourList has been grappling with poling showing that while 50% of voters support increasing defence spending as high as 3%, 55% opposed the idea of taxes rising to meet that extra spending. Given that the rest of Whitehall is already facing what Secretaries of State see as eye-watering cuts coming in the Spending Review, the idea of further pain for the MoD budget’s gain will add to Cabinet unhappiness. And Labour voters – it seems – would not be happy either, with the party’s supporters preferring spending to go towards public services over extra defence funding.

Given the emphasis Labour is putting on significant economic growth (so far elusive) translating into tangible improvements not just in the cost-of-living but in voters’ general experience of public services, redirecting money towards defence risks the delivery of that fundamental political objective. 

Some – including Hague – see opportunity as well as risk, arguing that like the US, China and Israel, the UK should lean into the possibilities of defence and technology to support growth. Meanwhile, BAE Systems shares jumped 6% on the news that far greater European defence spending looks imminent.

In the first few months of the Trump Administration, the Prime Minister has worked hard to resist making a binary choice between the US and the EU when it comes to a preferred trading relationship.

But with Trump uninterested in how his America First policies affect America’s allies as well as its adversaries, and with real domestic consequences set to bite from the spending decisions needed to respond to that new reality, Starmer may find that his political prospects are even less within his control than they were just a couple of months ago.