Originally Posted by
racedo
Bearing in mind that UK GDP has collapsed. Is the Military budget going to get capped down to 2% of GDP ?
It shouldn't. There's a double lock in play at present for defence spending - at least 2% of GDP but also a commitment that spending will rise by 0.5% above inflation at least for the next couple of years. The PM is on the record in the last couple of weeks as saying that the govt will maintain the 0.5% increase commitment.
Of course a degree of cynicism may be justified about the value of such commitments but the fact remains it would now be politically very difficult to backtrack on that, and apart from anything else the Tory back benches wouldn't wear it.
The main pressure may come from the need to incorporate additional fancy cyber commitments etc within the existing funding envelope, even allowing for a 0.5% increase. Some "legacy" elements will doubtless be sacrificed to enable that repackaging, the govt has already said as much. The question of course is what those will be.
There is also a problem in that there will now only be a one year spending programme instead of multi-year, due to Covid, which may act as a bit of a dead hand on the review outcome. The Times has reported that the PM and the Chancellor are currently at loggerheads over that.