UK Media Beating War Drums

The airwaves are currently dominated by gung-ho politicians, military “specialists” and defence correspondents talking up the need to increase U.K. weapons spending. This is necessary, they argue, to meet the “threat” to NATO countries of a newly emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This must be a different Vladimir Putin to the one emboldened by former Prime Minister Tony Blair who, in 2000, sought desperately to bring the newly elected Russian leader into the fold. This involved a series of meetings and an agreement to sell equipment with potential military use at a time when Putin was engaged in a brutal war in Chechnya.

Now, however, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is offering to put British troops “on the ground” in Ukraine as part of what he calls a peacekeeping force after fighting has stopped and is under pressure to speed up his promise to increase defence spending from 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent of GDP. 

This comes after U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on European states for not paying their way in defending the West even though European defence spending increased by 11.7 percent in 2024, the 10th consecutive year of real-terms growth according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Trump has further demanded that countries should spend not 2.5 percent, but 5. percent of GDP on defence.

News stories are littered with references to the “hollowed-out state of the U.K. armed forces” and the fact that the U.K. military is too “run down” to commit any troops to Ukraine. Concerns about the “peacekeeping” plan in Ukraine are focused not on the likely cost in terms of money, risk to life and further geopolitical instability but simply that it is not possible given the “depleted” state of the army.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meeting in Budapest, November 2024. (President of Ukraine, Flickr, Public domain)

Increasing defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP would cost approximately £7 billion a year — money that the British government has insisted it does not have and which would, therefore, be taken out of other budgets including education and welfare. Or the government would have to increase tax to inflate the defence budget.

Not surprisingly, a recent opinion poll made it clear that the U.K. public does not support such a move. According to YouGov, more than 55 percent would oppose tax hikes to pay for defence with only 30 percent backing the idea. 

So who exactly is Sky News referring to when it reports that “even 2.5% [of GDP] won’t silence the critics” and that “it might not even be enough”? The arms industry clamouring for increased investment or ordinary people continuing to face cuts in public services?

In fact, according to research carried out by Declassified UK, opposition to or concerns about increases in military spending rarely feature in defence-related stories.

In the 11 news stories located in BBC News’ “U.K. defence spending” category since July 2024 when the Labour government was elected, not a single voice opposed to increased defence spending has featured in its coverage.

Instead, stories have been dominated by a combination of government and opposition voices, military figures, think tanks and defence industry interests.

• Government ministers and spokespeople: 13
• Military figures: 7
• Conservative Party: 5
• Military specialists in think tanks: 4
• Defence industries: 3
• Reform: 1
• Green Party: 1 [note: co-leader Adrian Ramsay’s quote was in relation to supporting Ukraine and not in relation to defence spending itself]
• MoD source: 1
• Serious Fraud Office: 1

Former Prime Minister John Major — quoted once — features more than any current elected MP, trade unionist, academic or NGO source who might be allowed to represent the substantial body of opinion opposed to a hike in military spending. 

Fixing the Narrative

U.K. Ministry of Defence main building in Whitehall, London. (Harland Quarrington/MOD, OGL v1.0, Wikimedia Commons)

This removal of critical voices from mainstream journalism on defence issues is linked to the astronomical rise in stories on the topic in the last five years. 

Using the Nexis database to search for coverage of increased defence spending (interestingly, there are significantly more stories on “defence spending” than on “military spending”), we found a 2700 percent rise in stories across the U.K. media from Feb. 17, 2020, to Feb. 17, 2025:

• 2020-2021: 110
• 2021-2022: 97
• 2022-2023: 1435
• 2023-2024: 529
• 2024-2025: 3122

Clearly, there was a spike in related stories after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but the largest absolute increase in stories has been in the last 12 months when the media have stepped up their drumbeat. 

There has been a similar jump in stories across the British media focusing on the call to devote 3 percent of GDP to defence. While there were only 24 stories in 2020-2021, this increased to 908 in the last 12 months: a massive 3700 percent hike.

Intriguingly, stories devoted to “defence stocks” have soared as well. Just 17 stories focused on this topic in 2020-2021 while there were 466 stories in 2024-2025, a 2640 percent increase (including a doubling in the last year alone). 

This reflects a turnaround in fortunes for the arms trade. A story in The Guardian — headlined “European defence stock values surge” – reported that BAE Systems’ share price was up by 7.7 percent following the crisis meeting of European leaders on Feb. 17 to discuss Ukraine in reaction to the planned negotiations between Putin and Trump. As usual, no critical voices were featured in the article.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, third from right, during Feb. 17 talks among European leaders on Ukraine at a meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)

 Stoking War

The British media’s amplification of government and military voices is hardly new but their uncritical support for more spending on defence at a time of such global insecurity is symptomatic of a more general acquiescence to power when it comes to military matters.

When The Sun tweeted a story in February 2024 with the caption “British troops train in Norwegian snow – as they prepare for war in the Arctic,” the Ministry of Defence responded not by lowering the temperature and pointing out that Britain was not formally preparing to engage in military conflict with a nuclear power in its continent but by retweeting the story. 

Now, when British troops are engaged in several military exercises including NATO’s Exercise Steadfast Dart 25 in Romania and Bulgaria and Justified Accord in Kenya, Djibouti and Tanzania — let alone the visits to Israel of senior British army officers or the multiple RAF surveillance flights from its base in Cyprus to Gaza, as revealed by Declassified UK — the British media are reluctant to say a word, perhaps in case it jeopardises their preferred narrative that the army is “depleted,” starved of funds and barely able to function.

Mainstream media are far more comfortable in reproducing Ministry of Defence press releases and the calls by military figures for more funding than to feature even a semblance of balanced debate on such crucial issues. Instead, as we have previously argued, most mainstream reporting “is virtually 100 percent in line with the government’s own priorities.”

Now, in an even more volatile atmosphere, with Trump making inflammatory calls to occupy territory from Greenland to Gaza and with European leaders determined to re-arm even at the expense of further undermining public services, the media’s stoking of war is all the more dangerous.