NATO needs to see a credible trajectory for when the UK will be ready for war - and that is no longer in Sir Keir's gift

Sir Keir Starmer's determination to release a long-delayed defence investment plan ahead of a NATO summit next month risks doing more harm than good as officials scramble to meet what has become a political timeline.

The UK's allies are increasingly concerned at a failure by the government to rearm at pace, despite the prime minister declaring "hard power is the currency of the age".

Publishing the defence funding blueprint before Sir Keir meets with Donald Trump and other NATO leaders in Turkey on 7 and 8 July was meant to be a way of allaying such fears.

But, rather than reassuring allies, such a move risks having the reverse effect if Britain fails to set out a credible plan to transform the armed forces from hollowed out to fighting ready.

In a worrying sign, I understand that officials at the Ministry of Defence are scrambling to rush through tweaks to the defence investment plan after John Healey and Al Carns resigned a fortnight ago as defence secretary and armed forces minister respectively.

The pair quit in protest at a failure by Sir Keir and his chancellor to fund the original plan properly.

Mr Carns also criticised its content for not focusing on the right kit, with too much emphasis on large, expensive, legacy programmes such as fast jets, warships and submarines instead of cheap, disposable drones that have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine.

Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, has said he is now working hard to secure the "right" deal for the military and to release the defence investment plan before the Ankara summit.

However, this politically dictated timeline could result in a poor outcome for the armed forces, especially if any announcement is ultimately yet more decline dressed up as reprioritised investment, with choices dictated by fiscal constraint rather than what is needed.

The fact Sir Keir himself is only going to be in office for a few more weeks only adds to the lack of credibility and seriousness about what should be the top priority for any government.

None of this will impress fellow member states in NATO.

Most importantly, when it comes to the alliance, the headline metric that countries are judged on - as faulty and fudged as it can be - is defence spending as a proportion of GDP.

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Allies, with the exception of Spain, committed last year to lifting this ratio to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 - an unambitious timeline advocated by the prime minister and Rachel Reeves even though countries such as the Baltic states wanted to go much faster, and are already doing so.

Underlying the incoherency of this distant timeframe is the fact that much of NATO, including Britain, is saying the alliance needs to be ready for possible war with Russia by 2030 - five years before they agreed to hit the new defence spending baseline.

This mismatch between threat and investment is why Mr Healey, the previous defence secretary, could no longer support the prime minister's plan for the UK's armed forces as it would only raise the defence budget to 2.68% of GDP by 2030 from around 2.3% now.

He had instead been pushing to increase the level to 3% of GDP within four years followed by a clear path to move on to 3.5% by 2035 (or sooner). This would unlock tens of billions of pounds of additional money for the military at the speed of relevance.

But the Treasury baulked and the rest is history.

What NATO really needs to see from the UK - a country that prides itself as being a leading member of the alliance - is a credible trajectory for when it will actually hit the new spending targets and be ready to fight a war.

And that is no longer in Sir Keir's gift.

(c) Sky News 2026: NATO needs to see a credible trajectory for when the UK will be ready fo