Sir Keir Starmer defends Donald Trump's Iran strikes

Ministers have so far been at pains to stress Britain was not involved in the attacks, but Sir Keir gave his backing to Washington’s course of action as he prepared to meet the US president at a major summit of Nato allies.

Asked on his visit to The Hague yesterday whether he personally felt safe with Mr Trump in the White House, the Prime Minister said: “Look, I think what we’ve seen over the last few days is the Americans alleviating a threat to nuclear weaponry by the Iranians and bringing about a ceasefire in the early hours of today.

“I think now what needs to happen is that ceasefire needs to be maintained, and that will be the focus of our attention, our engagement, our discussions, because that ceasefire provides the space for the negotiations that need to take place.

“It will have to be negotiations … to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon capability and that is very important for safety and security, not just in the region, but more widely.”

The two warring nations had signed up to a ceasefire deal proposed by the US president in the early hours of Tuesday morning, before Israel claimed Iran had violated the deal by carrying out missile strikes after it came into force.

Iran’s military chiefs denied this, but faced a fresh onslaught ordered by the Israeli defence minister Israel Katz.

Mr Trump called for Israel to withdraw its warplanes, and claimed both it and Iran “don’t know what the f*** they’re doing” as he departed for the Nato summit in the Netherlands.

As he arrived for the meeting of military allies, Sir Keir meanwhile called for the ceasefire to be respected.

He told reporters: “I want the ceasefire to continue, and therefore, obviously, the sooner we get back to that the better, and that’s the message that I’m discussing with other leaders today.

“We’ve got a ceasefire. We need to get back to that ceasefire, which is consistent with what I’ve been saying about de-escalation for quite some time now.”

The Prime Minister was meeting Nato leaders to formally agree the target, made up of 3.5 per cent on “core defence” and another 1.5 per cent on “resilience and security”.

He rejected that tax rises would be needed to pay for higher defence spending.

“Every time we’ve set out our defence spending commitments, so when we went to 2.5% in 2027/28, we set out precisely how we would pay for it, that didn’t involve tax rises.

“Clearly we’ve got commitments in our manifesto about not making tax rises on working people and we will stick to our manifesto commitments,” the Prime Minister told reporters in the Netherlands.

He said the current commitment to get defence spending up to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027/8 was not coming at the expense of welfare, but rather from cuts to overseas development aid.

“So, it’s a misdescription to suggest that the defence spending commitment we’ve made is at the expense of money on welfare.”

At a Cabinet meeting yesterday morning before travelling to the Hague, Sir Keir underscored that national security is the “first duty” of Government.

His trip comes as the Government publishes its national security strategy, setting out plans to make the UK “more resilient to future threats”.

Downing Street has described the 5 per cent goal as “a projected target” that allies will review in 2029 when Nato carries out its next capability assessment.

It is a significant jump from the current 2 per cent Nato target, and from the UK Government’s aim of spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence from 2027 and 3 per cent at some point after the next election.

But the figure is in line with the demands of US President Donald Trump, who has called for Nato allies to shoulder more of the burden of European defence.

The Government expects to spend 1.5 per cent of GDP on resilience and security by 2027.

The details of what counts towards that target are due to be set out during this week’s summit, but it is likely to include spending on energy and border security as well as intelligence agencies.

But increasing core defence spending to 3.5 per cent will not happen until 2035, with at least two elections likely to take place before then.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that an increase in core defence spending from 2.6 per cent to 3.5 per cent would cost around £30 billion more a year.