Lord Robertson: Britain’s weak defences tempting Russia to attack

 Britain’s weak defences are tempting Russia to attack, Lord Robertson has said.

The former Nato secretary-general who wrote the Government’s Strategic Defence Review said the UK’s “vulnerable” security infrastructure could convince the Kremlin to attack within the next decade.

Lord Robertson, who served as defence secretary under Sir Tony Blair, has become a vocal critic of Sir Keir Starmer’s Government in recent weeks. 

Earlier this month he accused the Government of “corrosive complacency” and paying “lip service” to the risks the nation faced.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, the Labour grandee said Britain’s military weaknesses would be a temptation to Moscow.

Lord Arbuthnot, the Tory peer and former MP, asked him: “If the Government is saying, as it seems to be saying, ‘We will be ready but not until 2035’, are we increasing the risk that Russia might say: ‘Well, we better get in early, then?’”

Lord Robertson replied: “It certainly would be a temptation, I would have thought, in the Kremlin to do it.

“I think we should be very conscious of the fact that in the domestic press in Russia, we – the UK – have become the proxy for the Americans.

“There is an almost near-hysterical approach being taken about the UK, the Anglos, the English, as being the major opponents in the war in Ukraine.

“I think we should be very wary, therefore, about the way in which we are vulnerable in both our political national infrastructure and in our military as well.”

Sir Keir told world leaders in Munich in February that the UK needed to “go faster” in raising money to rearm and boost the armed forces.

The Army is at its smallest since before the Napoleonic War and the Navy is struggling to send ships to sea.

The Prime Minister vowed to raise defence investment to 3.5 per cent of GDP from just over 2 per cent – but not until 2035, despite Nato warning that Russia could be ready to invade the alliance within three years. He has also failed to say how the UK will hit its target.

Lord Robertson also told the joint committee on Britain’s national security strategy that cashpoints and traffic lights could cut out during a military attack.

He said: “When the lights do go out and the hospitals close and the data centres melt because the air conditioning has gone and the traffic lights are out and the ATMs are closed down, people are going to shout at politicians, the political class, and say: ‘Why do you not do something about it?’”

The peer accepted that the cost of improving Britain’s defensive readiness would be significant but insisted that it would be less expensive than an all-out war.

“At the end of the day, when the attack comes, we’ll have to pay for it,” he said. “Much better that you pay for deterrence.”

Lord Robertson pushed for higher spending in his Strategic Defence Review, which found that the UK would need to spend about £68bn to prepare its armed forces for modern warfare and recommended an uplift in the number of soldiers to 100,000, including reservists.

Last week, he said the Prime Minister must invest billions more in the military after decades of “over-reliance” on the US has allowed Britain to “neglect” its armed forces.