The former head of the British Army has warned Keir Starmer that the military needs serious investment now if peacekeeping troops are going to be deployed to Ukraine.
Lord Dannatt told BBC Breakfast, “we have got to invest much more in our military”, especially if the prime minister is “serious” about helping Kyiv on the ground.
Starmer announced overnight for the first time that he is ready to send peacekeeping troops to support the beleaguered country if a deal to end the war is struck.
But Dannatt said the prime minister has “got to realise that’s going to come at considerable cost”.
He said: “He’s got to start funding that now. Just going for 2.5% of GDP is not touching the sides. We’ve got to go for 3 or 3.5%.
“Commit to that now so defence planners can start spending the money in a sensible fashion to do what needs to do be done.
“He’s got to get real. He can’t live in fantasy-land.”
The UK currently spends 2.3% of its GDP on defence, exceeding the mandatory Nato minimum of 2%.
Labour has committed to increasing that to 2.5% – although it has not given a timeframe for that, and US President Donald Trump wants all Nato members to reach 5%.
Dannatt said: “Frankly we haven’t got the numbers and we haven’t got the equipment to put a large force onto the ground for an extended period of time at the present moment.
“Now, if Keir Starmer wants to do that, that’s fine, the British army will always stand up to the plate, but here we go again: we’ve got to have the right number of people with the right amount of equipment and the right amount of training, and start to fund that now.”
He added: “The frontline is very long between Russia and Ukraine. I could see perhaps Britain taking responsibility for a section of that, and I think that probably will require a force between 5 and 10,000.”
He said a six-month rotation with 7,500 deployments, that would require up to 30,000 troops.
“The British army is currently 73,000 strong, we have already got foreign deployments in Estonia and helping the Poles and around the world,” he said.
He said the army would have to mobilise reservists to protect Ukraine – and that’s before even discuss the amount of equipment the British troops have.
Dannatt warned only on Saturday that the UK military is “so run down” it could not lead any future peacekeeping missions.
He told the BBC up to 40,000 UK troops would be required for such a mission and “we just haven’t got that number available”.
Health secretary Wes Streeting told Times Radio this morning that protecting Ukraine is an “existential question for Europe as a whole” – but he refused to put a number on just how many troops the UK would send to Ukraine.
“I think it’s premature to be talking about numbers and to be speculating,” the cabinet minister said.
He added: “The prime minister set out his argument today and no doubt will be saying more during the course of today. I’m not going to get into a game of speculating about numbers.