Not the Tories nor Labour are giving assurances about maintaining the 2% line, and they aren't even giving real assurances about sticking at least to a flat in-real-terms budget with a 1% increase on equipment spending, which is the absolute minimum level of spending the MOD was promised when Future Force 2020 was devised. With the extremely significant caveat, by the way, that the flat-in-real-terms budget has to be calculated, of course, starting from a base amount. And the base MOD budget has been falling significantly each year since 2010. Depending on which fiscal year serves as base for the calculation, the budget over five years changes by several billion pounds.Read it here.
Even worse, there seem to be almost certainty that there will be new, vast cuts to the budget. Something that, inexorably, would entirely wreck Future Force 2020, changing yet once more the plans, imposing new cuts even before the last ones are completed. And putting a very big nail in the coffin of Britain's role as a military power. If not the final nail, close to it.
Paralus has been talking about this in the comments for months now. The Brits and Germans are acting as if they live on a different planet and their defense budgets show it!
The Brits will no longer be credible defense partners in the future. They're putting all their eggs in the economic power found in London. Its feeble, weak and bound to fail but that's where their future clout will lie.
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