DOWNING Street has been blasted for a “nauseating” film it published featuring young people hailing Labour’s plans to hike military spending.
The Prime Minister’s official Twitter/X account put out a video featuring students praising the plans – which they say make them feel “more secure about the future”.
The UK Government plans to increase defence spending by £16 billion per year as part of a massive rearmament push across Europe sparked by Donald Trump’s insistence that the US’s allies spend more on defence.
In the video, a student identified as Luigi said: “It opens more doors for the youth because putting more money towards all the small to medium businesses and the opportunities that we’ve just seen that Keir Starmer has announced, I think it’s great.
“It’s a great opportunity for the younger generation to grab a hold, you know, expand their skills, maybe even find a career.”
We asked young people and businesses how our increase in defence spending would impact them. This is what they said 👇 pic.twitter.com/bQap83za7u
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 4, 2025
Melody, also a student, added: “It will open more doorways for me and probably people like me, which is younger people, so young adults and it means more job opportunities. It’s made me feel more secure about the future.”
Greens co-leader Lorna Slater said: “This is a cynical campaign from Downing Street, which is trying to give cover to its decision to slash aid and welfare in order to inflate military budgets.
“It is totally wrong to be removing support from some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people to give it to some of the biggest arms companies.”
The UK Government has said it will raid the foreign aid budget to pay for more defence spending – but the total transferred is not enough and Labour’s critics say they will also need to plunder the welfare budget – expected to suffer a multi-billion pound cut in the coming weeks – to make up the extra.
Slater (below) added: “Will they do an equivalent video to show the catastrophic impact of the cuts they are making to pay for it?
“The engineers working in the arms industry are some of the most skilled in the world and would be a gift to a renewables sector that is crying out for investment and workers. Their talents can and must be used to power our way to a cleaner, greener environment.”
Campaign group Stop the War said young people were “being lied to”. A spokesperson for the group said: “Using a clearly selective group of young people to boost his warmongering agenda is another low from this disgraceful prime minister.
“Those who believe that increased defence spending will result in more job opportunities are being lied to. The only beneficiaries are the arms companies, whose profits are assured.
“Meanwhile, the social security of housing, health and education that millions of workers, including young workers, desperately need are further undermined – as we are seeing with the prospect of still more savage cuts to welfare budgets.”
The campaign group called on Keir Starmer (below) to speak to “the thousands of young people who regularly join anti-war protests up and down the country”, adding: “They are clear that they don't want more war, and they don't want jobs in the defence industry, but ones that will build a genuinely safer world, such as in renewables.”
David MacKenzie, secretary of pressure group Secure Scotland, added: “There is something really nauseating about this when so many of our young people are trapped in precarious and part-time jobs.
“Why in heaven’s name can we not be preparing something wholesome? Bear in mind that weaponry made in the UK – albeit usually for a transnational arms company – will, if recent behaviour is any guide, end up being used by oppressive regimes in deadly conflicts, as in Palestine, Yemen and Sudan.”
MacKenzie said that privately-owned defence companies, as opposed to ones “under real democratic control and nationalised”, meant “excess profit-making, corruption, and, most importantly, the artificial bloating of demand which stokes militarism and war-mongering”.
He added: “This is ‘Bombs not Bairns’. We have to do better.”
