Sir Keir Starmer had three audiences in mind when he took to the stage at the Munich Security Conference. But if he is to keep his word to any of them, he must deliver a political step-change at home.

First was the EU. He wants them to allow the UK to access its new defence commissioning fund which would give British defence firms a role in a lucrative scheme to rearm the continent. He’s already been refused once, but he commenced a new charm offensive, proclaiming “we are not the Britain of the Brexit years anymore”.

Next came the United States, for whom he seeks to act as a diplomatic bridge with offended European allies. Arguing that “the US remains an indispensable power”, he echoed the White House’s argument that Europe must stand on its own two feet, and dispatched a carrier group to the High North to assuage Donald Trump’s Greenland concerns.

Third was the domestic British audience, which he hopes to reassure that he will fulfil the most fundamental duty of any government: security through strength.

This last audience may well be the hardest to persuade – not only because the better they get to know the Prime Minister the less they like him, but also because it is they who must bear the hard choices necessary to allow him to be true to his word.

It’s all very well promising to be tough and constant to other world leaders, but without the consent of his electorate, Starmer cannot possibly fulfil the above promises to our allies.

The Prime Minister’s goals are obviously correct. To be a strong Nato partner. To be a lynchpin and supply workshop of a rearmed Europe. To be trusted by the United States, projecting independent deterrence at sea and on land. Above all to be prepared for a potential conflict with Russia before the end of the decade.

Fulfilling them will require decisive actions which he himself may not be able to carry out. Without follow-through, those strong words are worth little. The most obvious implication of Starmer’s speech is that British defence spending must rise rapidly.

Officially, Starmer is committed to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by the 2027-28 financial year. Thereafter, spending will rise to 3 per cent “within the next parliament”, which could mean any time up to 2034, then 3.5 per cent by 2035. Characteristically of this Government, there are various parallel efforts to rewrite the definition, and add in spending on resilience and the security services, but these are the brass tacks.

If he believes war may come by 2029, the bald meaning of his speech in Munich is that it is going to have to accelerate, by a lot. His wider message to the Europeans, in particular, that we need to spend more wisely by unifying the platforms and systems that we commission – and ideally doing so by using EU funds to buy from cutting-edge British manufacturers – is of course correct. But the foundation on which any progress must be built is spending more.

That means that the Cold War dividend, when the fall of the Soviet Union meant that grateful chancellors in the 1990s could cut defence and splash cash elsewhere, is dead and buried. No longer can the welfare and administrative states of Britain and our neighbours grow fat by requiring their militaries to be lean.

For Starmer that presents a particular problem: where is the money to come from? I’ve argued before in this column that a sizeable amount could and should be sourced by seizing the Russian state assets frozen since the latest invasion of Ukraine. But the Belgian government continues to block this route.

Perhaps taxes could rise – but Britain is already struggling under a record-high tax burden. Imposing yet more would likely push our economy, which delivered just 0.1 per cent growth in the final quarter of 2025, right under water.

We might wish it were not thus, but it is. So unless we think we can continue to skimp on defence, four years into the worst European land war since Hitler, then we must find the money from elsewhere in government spending.

To Starmer’s credit, he has already accepted this principle, when he cut foreign aid last year explicitly to move the money to defence.

The question is whether he commands sufficient support among his own MPs to implement spending cuts anywhere else. We all know what keeps happening to his efforts to reform welfare, a budget five times the amount we spend on defending the nation.

The foreign aid experience must surely be his model. If he means the words that he delivered in Munich, then they should become the foundation for a new fiscal policy: of every saving the government makes, from any department, a fixed share should go to defence.

Make it 50 per cent, or 75 per cent, or 25 per cent, whatever is required to get the job done, but he and his ministers should be explicit with their colleagues and the nation that while they might not like such austerity, it is happening to keep us safe in a time of severe national peril.

This would be true, and it would also be effective. Too often we are told that we can have what we want without a trade-off, or that opposing tough measures is a cost-free exercise, when the reality is the very opposite. In Munich, Starmer made a good case for the seriousness of the issue – if he means it, he must put it into practice at home.

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