In the UK, companies like Ford and General Dynamics are adapting their commercial lines to the production of militarised variants of the Ford Ranger. Heavy engineering commercial firms like Sheffield Forgemasters and Alloyed have partnered to produce Howitzers artillery systems and high-speed jet engines for military drones. The Ministry of Defence announced that the Burnham government “is funnelling £298 billions of State money (over 4 years) into the UK Defence Investment Plan to help private UK defence firms build factories, hire workers, secure international buyers and attract outside investment”. [1]
When he was elected in 2024, Keir Starmer promised to return the UK to ‘economic growth’ by combining his Green Prosperity Plan with his Strategic Defence Review(SDR). Introduced by him in early 2025, the SDR represented a “reform of the defence industry to secure the country against Russian aggression and internal economic stagnation”. In June 2026 – the Starmer government injected new funding to start implementing “defence readiness” in the army, the air force and the navy – together with plans to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. This strategy aimed at “boosting jobs”, with a further £250m State fund invested in five branches of the economy.[2]
When Starmer was Prime Minister (PM) from July 2024 to July 2026, his Strategic Defence Review plan (SDR) aimed at guaranteeing national security and economicsecurity at the same time. According to this, building a strong army and drone-manufacturing centres were not just for ‘defence’, but “to energise the economy”. Now that Starmer has stepped down, the new Labour PM, Andy Burnham retakes the same path with even greater force.
Burnham sought popularity through oblique criticisms of militarism and a commitment to Net Zero (emissions) by 2050.
Shortly before he resigned, Starmer found that he could not finance both his Green Prosperity Plan with his Strategic Defence Review. He would have to cut social welfare for the sake of warfare. When the Hormuz Strait was closed, Starmer’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves faced new levels of inflation and huge increases in the cost of long-term government borrowing.
Pressed by Nato, the Starmer government decided nonetheless to commit an extra £15b for the army. Improvements to the navy and the manufacture of autonomous drones became priorities – but there was never enough money for the military. Government departments stopped working together. On 11 June 2026, the Starmer’s Defence Secretary (John Healey) and the Armed Forces Minister (AL Carns) both resigned. They said that the country was now “in danger” and that “a stronger national deterrence against Russian expansionism” was wanted. Andy Burnham – then still Mayor of Manchester – accused Starmer of having cancelled important social projects “to pay for the Whitehall military wrangling”.
The 2019 Amended Climate Change Act commits all UK governments to achieving ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is very firmly defended by Ed Miliband who served under Starmer, and is now serving under Burnham. With his Green credentials, Miliband has support in a generally progressive layer of the left in the Labour Party and Trade Unions. He gets support also from the British bourgeois commercial sector that trades for billions with China.
The resignation of Starmer was wished for by an important faction of the Labour bureaucrats, and by Labour imperialists in the arms industry. Many of them want a return to big oil drilling in the North Sea. They forced Miliband to accept some of this, but he has support of his own in trade unions like Unison (Public Sector), the teachers and others. The mass of the working class welcomes his “Green Prosperity Plan” because it is socially useful and requires workers.
Starmer did not resign. He was pushed by all sides, the left included
Starmer was publicly humiliated and hounded by the US and UK top army generals who wanted an immediate increase in Nato’s funding, and the swift preparation of the British armed forces to “war-fighting readiness”. [3]
Meanwhile, US, UK and international financiers were demanding from Starmer that he should align with Donald Trump’s view that China is a “primary systemic and economic threat”. [4]
Since Tony Blair, the leadership of what used to be centrist Labour tendencies has steadily moved rightwards. It prosecutes and persecutes the pro-Palestinians. It endorses Nato’s demands for ‘war readiness’ and supports the industrial rearming in the UK. As a group, Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, John Healey, David Lammy, Wes Streeting and even Ed Miliband have kept reiterating their “ironclad support for Ukrainian sovereignty, territorial integrity and resisting Russian aggression”.
Even before he became PM in July 2026, Andy Burnham was a firm supporter of Ukraine against Russia. Since he became PM, his government signed an AI partnership with Ukraine, and agreed with it a plan to mass produce the UK Stone Cloak electronic warfare system to disable Russian air defences. The Burnham administration has recently allowed the European MBDA arms manufacturer to use British classified blueprints and technical data for the manufacture of long-range cruise missiles in local Ukrainian and French assembly lines. Russia justly riposted that it now feels entitled to target British soil.
When Nato was piling up demands on Starmer, he did not find support in his group of ministers. There, many agreed with the army’s demands, whilst others sought to guard their departments against financial cuts. In front of the resistance (to cuts) on the part of trade unions like UCU, and left Labour sectors like John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, David Taylor – and even Andy Burnham, the Starmer leadership simply gave up.
This crisis continues now. The 158th Trade Unions Congress (TUC) was held on 13th Sept. It reiterated its support for the UCU-led “Wages not Weapons” motion passed by its own TUC Congress last year. The adoption of this motion reversed the TUC previous stance in support of more money for the army.
In sectors of the Labour left, in the trade union bases and in large swathes of the petit bourgeoisie, Starmer’s was widely repudiated for his complicity with the genocide in Gaza. He was condemned for his close adherence to Nato and the militarisation of the country. He was despised for his obsequiousness towards monarchy, towards Donald Trump and towards big power. In the Conference of StopTheWar in London on 16 June, the debate did not favour Ukraine as had been done in the past. In her televised speech during that Conference, Diane Abbots – member of parliament, MP – firmly denounced Nato as the warmonger in Ukraine – and drew applause.
The population does not endorse the fascism of Reform (Farage), or that of Ukraine
Although Starmer came to government with an apparent landslide in the 2024 general elections, his Labour Party had only attracted 33.7% of the vote. Subsequently, it became proven that 22% of those who had voted Labour in 2024 ended up joining the Green Party subsequently; and that another 16% had joined the Liberal Democrats. The Labour vote that went to Reform UK was only 6% “despite the intense media focus on Farage targeting working class supporters”[5]. In the two years of Starmer, Labour lost nearly four times as many voters to the Greens than to Reform.
The workers’ base of Labour and large layers of the petit bourgeoisie defend Palestine. Like the US’ rapper Macklemore, they affirm that genocide is a crime and opposing genocide is a duty. This very far-right Labour government prosecutes senselessly those who denounce genocide, but quite a few prosecutions end up with exonerations in the courts of justice.
In London, many of the Ukrainian flags that used to float above public buildings have been removed. There is not a day when the British media does not accuse Russia of some malicious action somewhere in the world, or near the British coasts. The population senses that it is not Russia that wants to attack, but the UK government that wants and needs to attack Russia. There is a diffuse but general opposition to putting the country on a war footing, even against demonised Russia.
The majority of people do not believe that Russia is the enemy, or bringing war.
Andy Burnham is now facing the same dilemmas as Starmer – just in worse conditions. With his visit to London 3 days ago, the Nato’s general secretary Mark Rutte obtained from Andy Burnham a pledge of “unwavering commitment to Nato and our Nato obligations”, as well as for British troops to be “serving in Nato Missions around the world” [6].
But there is growing war revulsion in the country; and a disbelief – even in the bourgeois class – that Russia intends to conquer Europe! But unable to develop the economy for human need, the bourgeois class looks to another world war sufficiently destructive to justify capitalism regrouping for ‘reconstruction’ afterwards, with hopefully another boom. Until the next ‘bust’. There is quite a bit of knowledge, and indignation regarding this in the working class nowadays.
The absence of an organised and programmatic Labour-and-Trade-Union left organisation allows the Burnham government to continue to cripple the life of the climate-change protestors (Extinction-Rebellion) and those of Palestine Action – like Starmer used to do. The capitalist State is busy putting in place the repressive mechanisms through which it will try to defeat, if it can, all other anti-conscription, anti-militarisation and anti-war movements.
But at every instance of State attack on protestors at large, the pressure mounts in the working class to separate itself from the Labourite bureaucracy and bourgeoisie. The day will come when no one will be able to silence the call for working class democracy in its trade unions and organisations.
Starmer resigned not only from the government but from his post as MP in parliament. He felt he was not wanted, or needed in either of those places. His resignation is another sign of fissure and incapacity in the Labour-trade union apparatus whose paramount fear is that workers should start imposing workers democracy in the trade unions.
A measure of the fissure and of the incapacity of the Labour-Trade Union apparatus shows in the 2 speeches that Diane Abbots, MP, could successfully deliver on national television when she announced, each time, that the attacker in Ukraine is not Russia, but Nato.
Andy Burnham may think that his relative popularity should lend him the good-will of the ordinary people. But this relative popularity may also awaken those still expecting better from Labour.
The reason why Starmer failed to achieve “economic growth” by combining his Green Prosperity Plan with
Keir Starmer failed to return the UK to “economic growth” by combining his Green Prosperity Plan with the militarisation of society. We are told there was not enough money for both, but since trillions could be found in 2008-10, and in Covid times, Starmer’s failure has not come from a lack of money
The reason why Starmer’s Green Prosperity Plan did not flourish is quite simply because the international billionaire caste that has taken to running the world capitalist system has no interest in green solutions. Its every interest is to cast aside the green solutions and ridicule the concept of climate change.
Labour was never the Party to transcend the capitalist system, but if it has perdured for so long in history, it is through the lack of systematic, class and proletarian organisation in Britain and internationally. This has allowed Labour to grab the reins of society even when its leader, Starmer, dared to openly agree with Israel’s policy of genocide in Gaza.
Starmer did not fail due to lack of funds. He failed because he connived with and directly controlled the nazi-zionist-colonialist penetration of the Labour Party, of the British state and of the main social organs (political parties, media, newspapers, schools, universities, municipalities, sports, culture, entertainment, etc).
As Burnham surrenders to Nato and to the priorities of the industrial military complex, he will be driven to agreeing with genocide, like Starmer did. Capitalism hides behind Labour to conceal that it has no humane answer to any human need. But it does this also to divert attention from its desperate determination to save its regime at whatever the costs to humanity, to life, or to the planet.
The need of capitalism to operate through Labour is driven also by its need to corrupt and paralyse working class organisation. The strength of the Labour and trade union bureaucracy is in the capitalist system, not in the working class. Capitalist warmongering and degeneration saps at the roots of bureaucracy in the workplaces and the trade unions. The unfolding WW3 that we are in stimulates anti-war, anti-fascist and anti-capitalist currents in the Labour and trade union bases.
Posadists Today, 18.9.26
[1]https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a44e989167a99cf0018da38/The_Defence_Investment_Plan.pdf
[2] The five branches of the economy were: One: Green Energy from wind, solar and nuclear power’ Two: large-scale battery manufacturing plants and electric vehicle manufacturing; Three: Port infrastructure; Four: Carbon Capture and Storage with the aim of industry decarbonization; Five: Green Hydrogen & Investment in domestic steel industry.
[3] https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/a-uk-strategy-for-deterrence-and-supply-chain-resilience-in-the-indo-pacific/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/30/trump-
[5] https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54811-labours-voter-coalition-broke-more-to-left-than-right-at-2026-local-elections
[6] https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/burnham-vows-unwavering-commitment-to-nato-5HjdhZ2_2/
