Demonstration in The Hague, June 22, 2025 against the NATO Summit

Whilst some media commentators were claiming that Britain's Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, "was sidelined at the NATO summit", they ignored that Starmer spent the days leading up to the summit and at the summit itself, speaking with almost hysterical propaganda about a "wartime scenario" on "British soil", when no threat to invade Britain exists now, or is likely in the future. This was partly to try and divert attention from his unpopularity at home with the huge opposition to his government's welfare cuts to the disabled. However, it was also to try justify the unjustifiable huge military spending and war preparations, whilst trying to block any attempts of other countries and peoples of the world to use diplomacy and develop peaceful solutions to resolve conflicts in the world.

Instead Starmer and his government have become the main champions of war preparations demanded by the oligarchy and ruling elite in Britain. They are the war criminals also linked to the Zionist Israeli state and British war industries soaked in the blood of genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine and US/Israel's attack on Iran. These warmongers are vying for leadership of the aggressive NATO alliance and the huge profits it promises and power they hope it will project. Starmer and the war criminals he represents will never bring about peace and security for the British people and people of the world.

Starmer spoke before and at the summit. He and his defence cabinet issued another National Security Strategy 2025 labelled "Security for the British People in a Dangerous World (NSS 2025)" [1] on Tuesday following on from the release of the Strategic Defence Review [2] only weeks ago on June 7. Starmer issued the warning that Britain must actively prepare for a "wartime scenario" on British soil "for the first time in many years". He declared that "I have made the commitment to spend 5 per cent of GDP on national security" and he tried to deny that it is "a misdescription to suggest that the defence spending commitment we've made is at the expense of money on welfare". He made the hollow claim that this "is coming from cuts to foreign aid" rather than from his proposed cuts to the welfare bill which cuts - before his U-turn in Personal Independence Payments - were expected to total around £5 billion a year.

However, hypocritically at the summit, Starmer reasserted Britain's commitment to "foreign military aid" with announcements to continue support for Ukraine and NATO's involvement and military support in Ukraine for NATO's never-ending proxy war against Russia. In reality, this is a commitment to make huge profits from weapons, and support the testing of those weapons against Russia using Ukraine as their proxy cannon fodder. Over the course of the war, Britain has given Ukraine at least £12.8bn packages of support, including £7.8bn of military assistance, with Starmer's commitment in signing a "hundred year agreement" with Ukraine that commits Britain to pay Ukraine "£3bn in military aid a year until as long as it takes".

The latest scheme Starmer announced this week was to "support Ukraine", and that Britain will boost Ukraine's "air defence" with 350 missiles using funds from "seized Russian assets". Of course, for Starmer, seizing Russian-owned assets is not seen as a step-up and a dangerous escalation compared with British imperialist's regular robber-state logic that goes back centuries, namely, to seize the assets of many "weaker" countries. In recent times Britain seized $2 billion of the gold of Venezuela and has refused and continues to refuse to return it from the Bank of England [3].

At the summit Starmer tried to present himself and Britain in a "leading" posturing light for the "unity" role in NATO, declaring that "the moment to unite, for Europe to make a fundamental shift in its posture" and the commitment by NATO members each to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defence and security measures by 2045 will make the alliance "stronger, fairer and more lethal than ever".

Starmer said that under the "Nato new definitions we estimate that we will reach at least 4.1% of GDP in 2027 keeping the British people safe and strengthening our leadership in Nato even further". Starmer had previously declared in the Strategic Defence Review only two weeks ago the intention of "increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with an ambition to reach 3% in the next Parliament". Of course, all this goes on without any reference to Parliament, let alone the British people, but instead using the police powers of the state to declare anything about questions of war and peace that the government wants.

Starmer in trying to paper over the increasing divisions in the NATO alliance is also increasing the divisions. Starmer "insisted" that US President Donald Trump "was a reliable ally". But Starmer is caught in this "special arrangement" with the US which he perpetuates himself, despite the fact that the US and NATO no longer command the attention of even those it calls partners and allies in Europe and the world. Britain's warmongering elite and its allies are increasingly isolated among nations as the perpetuator of wars and genocide. Their grip on the world and perpetuation of NATO must end for the peoples of the world to enjoy real peace and security.

Notes
1. National Security Strategy 2025: Security for the British People in a Dangerous World (NSS 2025)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-security-strategy-2025-security-for-the-british-people-in-a-dangerous-world/national-security-strategy-2025-security-for-the-british-people-in-a-dangerous-world-html
2. Strategic Defence Review: Starmer's Attempt to Put Britain on "War-Fighting Readiness" Cannot Be Accepted, Workers' Weekly, June 7 2025
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-25/ww25-13/ww25-13-01.htm
3. Roughly 31 tons of Venezuela's gold, worth around $2 billion, remain frozen in the Bank's vaults. The dispute began when the British government recognised opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate president in 2019, rather than Nicolás Maduro. This recognition led the Bank of England to deny the Maduro administration's access to the gold, despite repeated requests. Even though Guaidó has since been ousted by Venezuela's opposition parties, the gold remains illegally held by Britain.

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