RISHI SUNAK was accused of desperate scaremongering as he claimed Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer would risk national security and embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin today.

The straw-clutching Prime Minister said Labour’s position on defence sent the wrong message at a time when the world was facing “one of the most dangerous periods we’ve ever known.”

He said the country faced threats over the next five years from an “axis of authoritarian powers,” extremists seeking to sow division at home, artificial intelligence and global forces imperilling people’s financial security.

Mr Sunak also hit out at the “unprincipled” Labour leader over the defection of former Tory MP for Dover Natalie Elphicke, who has held an anti-strike stance and reportedly lobbied a minister to interfere in her then-husband’s sex offences trial.

He said: “It shows him to be completely and utterly unprincipled. This is someone who went from embracing Jeremy Corbyn to embracing Natalie Elphicke.”

Vowing to fight the next election on defence, Mr Sunak criticised Labour’s failure to meet the government plans to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

With the Tories more than 20 points behind in the opinion polls, he said that the government’s commitment to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence meant he could promise enduring support to Ukraine.

“Keir Starmer can’t stand here and make that pledge and, actually, the Labour Party and Keir Starmer not matching our investment on defence spending emboldens our adversaries,” he added.

“What do you think Putin thinks when he sees that?”

Labour has said it wants to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP but has not set a date for that target and said it would carry out a defence review if it wins the election.

Sir Keir called Mr Sunak’s speech to the Policy Exchange think tank “his seventh reset in 18 months,” adding: “Having worked on national security in my previous role when I was director of public prosecutions, I know first-hand the importance of national security.”

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said that the Tories’ record in government showed they were the real danger to living standards, public services and workers’ rights in this country.  

“And for all Rishi Sunak’s warnings about future threats — he’s still refusing to bring forward legislation to protect workers from discrimination and exploitation due to misuse of AI,” he said.

“While the likes of the US and EU are putting legal guardrails in place to make sure AI can be used safely in the workplace our government has done nothing.”

The union federation, which last month published a “ready-to-go” expert legal blueprint for regulating AI in the workplace, says employment law is failing to keep pace with the rapid speed of technological change, leaving many workers vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination. 

A spokesman for Momentum said: “This was another desperate speech from a Prime Minister and a Conservative Party who have run out road.

“Fourteen years of Tory austerity and privatisation have broken Britain and voters are sick and tired of it. Sunak’s scaremongering is convincing no-one, as the latest election results show.

“Now we need a real Labour alternative based on public investment and public ownership, not more of the same.”

Responding to his speech, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson said: “The Prime Minister is right to say that nuclear dangers are at their highest since the Cuban missile crisis, yet his own government — and previous Tory governments — have done so much to increase that danger.”

She said former PM Boris Johnson in 2021 announced a 40 per cent increase in Britain’s nuclear arsenal, five years after Theresa May’s government oversaw the agreement to replace Britain's current nuclear weapons system Trident.

“Both of those decisions break international law and ride roughshod over Britain’s obligation to disarm under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said Ms Hudson.

“Equally dangerous and foolhardy is the government’s silent acquiescence in the US deployment of its own nuclear weapons to Britain, planned for return to Lakenheath for the first time since 2008.

“This has already led to Russia’s decision to site its own nuclear weapons in Belarus.”

New Ipsos polling shows three in four Britons think it is unlikely Mr Sunak will win the next election.