Keir Starmer hosted a Defence careers fair last year in 10 Downing for businesses, apprentices and students (Photo: Flickr / Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)
The Labour government’s plan to plough £15 billion into “defence” threatens to axe 10,000 jobs in Britain.
Labour plans to steal £6.8 billion from other departments to feed the war machine—and it will need to find another £4.7 billion.
Cuts are expected to be made initially from transport, energy and infrastructure. Two major road improvement projects have been halted already.
The analysis by researchers at the Transition Security Project says that the defence investment plan would generate 10,000 jobs by 2029-30. But snatching money from other sectors will slash nearly double that—meaning a net loss of 10,000.
Report co-author Khem Rogaly said, “The idea that military spending can provide a defence dividend is misleading: job losses will result from this latest funding settlement while the opportunity cost of military spending is sharp.
“Far more jobs are created when investing in public needs like health, education and addressing the climate crisis. This latest data suggests that the turn towards autonomous weapons and AI could also mean that military spending creates even fewer jobs per pound than before.”
Each £1 million invested in defence will only create 2.4 jobs in Britain.
The same spending in transport would create 11.5 jobs, and if invested in the energy sector it would create 10.
This is partly because the supply and production chains involved in defence operate abroad.
In the US alone, British military spending funds some 200,000 jobs.
Unison union general secretary Andrea Egan said, “This costly and wasteful plan means extra cash for war and overseas interventions, but less for schools and hospitals.
“These are the wrong priorities. We need to go to war on poverty, inequality and climate change.”
The general secretary Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Sophie Bolt, slammed the funding plans. “It’s a financial black hole that will drain public resources for generations,” she said.
“These are political choices, and they are the wrong ones.”
The CND are calling for the government to “invest instead in the things that actually keep people safe—healthcare, housing, education, climate action”.
The unions need to hit back at the cost of living crisis—and demand the government invests in schools and homes not tanks and drones.
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