KEIR STARMER’S parting gift to the country he has so misgoverned is an enormous and unaffordable arms build-up which helps set Britain on the road to war.

The Defence Investment Plan unveiled today specifically cuts energy and transport investment to pay for a fleet of new military drones. New Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis appears to have squeezed new money out of the Treasury where his predecessor John Healey failed.

The vast sums now allocated to the military are never going to be enough for some, of course — the unrepentant Blairite hawks in the Labour Party, as well as the right-wing media and the arms corporations.

Their ideal is a small country attached to a huger military. Starmer’s plan takes a step in that direction.

That he announced it in the twilight days of his premiership is clearly designed to tie the hands of his heir apparent, Andy Burnham.

Not that Burnham has set his face against the frenzied militarisation of the economy. His position remains somewhat enigmatic, on this as on much else.

But today’s announcement will certainly constrict his freedom of manoeuvre in terms of public spending when he takes over in three weeks’ time, barring the entirely unforeseen.

It also appears to form part of a job application for Starmer to take over from Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte as Europe’s warmonger-in-chief.

On the key qualification of subservience to Donald Trump, Starmer has already, like Rutte, proved that there are no depths to which he will not sink.

Committing the British state to an open-ended arms build-up will additionally commend him to those that make these appointments.

There are bigger issues for the labour movement than Starmer’s personal future, however.

The first is rejecting the idea that military spending is the road to industrial regeneration and manufacturing jobs.

In fact, arms spending is an inefficient way to create employment, since the industry is in Marxist terms, weighted towards constant rather than variable capital, investing in high-tech equipment rather than labour.

Moreover, as Rutte revealed last week, much of the money will be spent on US firms which, already geared to the enormous Pentagon budget, can outbid British rivals for most applications and contracts.

Better by far for unions to demand a holistic industrial strategy based on public ownership and regional development, as Burnham has suggested, than putting all eggs in the military basket.

Still more important is the question of what these weapons are to be used for? Anyone suggesting national defence is misleading you.

Britain’s military strategy ever since the end of the cold war has been structured around global interventionism, usually as junior partner to Washington. 

The arms budget over the last quarter-century has been spent in attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and supporting Israel, and on bases in Cyprus, Diego Garcia and Bahrain.

This has been about imperialism, not protecting Britain from menaces which, as in the case of the hoary old Russian threat now being trotted out daily, have scant foundation in reality.

Loading up the establishment responsible for one criminal aggression after another with arms not only diverts resources from meeting the British people’s needs — it hands a proven arsonist more petrol and matches.

As the great anti-war conference held in London 10 days ago showed, people across Europe and beyond are rising up against the war drive not only because of the warped social priorities it shows but because such drives tend to end up in — war.

The defence plan must therefore be rejected — it is a squalid epitaph to Labour’s worst post-war premiership, and a reckless gamble with our future.