TOMORROW's Stop the War demonstration highlights a much wider political crisis in Britain as the world awaits President Donald Trump’s deliberations on whether to intervene militarily against Iran.  

Trump’s two-week moratorium will end exactly when our own Parliament will vote on whether to cut £5 billion from disability benefits. Its advocates argue that this proposal cannot be reversed because the money has “already been spent.” They don’t say how. But it is these cuts affecting the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, 1.2 million men, women and children, that will provide the lion’s share of the £10 billion increase in Britain’s military spending by 2029. By the end of next year this will have lifted military spending as a percentage of Britain’s GDP to 2.6 per cent.

At the Nato summit on Tuesday our Prime Minister will be announcing this increase as he seeks to place Britain, and its munitions industry, at the centre of Europe’s rearmament drive.

Last year Germany overtook Britain as the biggest spender and this year its new right-wing dominated coalition suspended its constitutional “debt brake” specifically to enable more arms spending and to enhance its lead.  

By contrast Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, leader of Spain’s socialist-led coalition, has announced  that Spain would not be increasing its arms spending beyond 1.5 per cent of GDP.

His left-wing political base still values welfare over warfare. Spain’s neighbour Portugal also spends only 1.5 per cent on arms while neutral Ireland, now one of Europe’s wealthiest countries, spends just 0.2 per cent.

However, it not just a matter of “defence.” Behind the Nato pressure for more spending lurks the armaments industry.

Originally in 2024 it was President Trump who first demanded that all Nato members increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. He did so for reasons that make very good sense for US arms manufacturers.  

EU countries last year imported over 60 per cent of their weapons from the US. Britain’s arms imports were almost as big. For Trump’s backers the Nato spending game was even better than tariffs.

Now, however, this armaments drive has entered a new phase. The biggest EU states, Germany in particular, seek to take advantage themselves  They see rearmament as a way of ending the recession that has dogged their economies, a recession that started with the cutting off of cheap Russian gas and with US trade policies under Joe Biden and then Trump that decimated their exports.  

This year, with the debt brake released, Germany’s biggest arms producer, Rheinmetall, saw the value of its shares more than double as investment companies poured in cash.

The other major German arms firm, Siemens, was just behind at 96 per cent, France’s Thales jumped 97 per cent and BAE’s share value rose 77 per cent.

It is against this background that we have to set the consequences for Britain’s budget cuts  for those with disabilities.

Such households are already very vulnerable. Citizens Advice report that their case work indicates a third have dependent children, that currently such households suffer a monthly deficit of £26 and that government’s cuts will increase this to over £200.

Child Poverty Action warns that 100,00 more children could be pushed into poverty.  

Such households also suffer all the multiple stresses arising from long-term hardship. Many have to struggle as  carers of dependent parents or relatives and it is in this context that concern must also be registered at Parliament’s approval today of the next stage of the Assisted Dying Bill, albeit with a significantly reduced majority.  

Those who have lobbied against the disability benefit cuts have also been the strongest opponents of the Assisted Dying Bill. For them the slogan welfare not warfare has a very direct meaning.