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Sir Keir Starmer will pledge to Nato that the UK will raise spending on national security to 5 per cent of GDP within a decade, as members attempt to convince US President Donald Trump to stick with the alliance.

The pledge would raise core defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035, with an additional 1.5 per cent on security related infrastructure such as cyber security and border protection.

The UK prime minister had already pledged to raise defence spending from around 2.3 per cent currently to 2.6 per cent by 2027, with an ambition to increase it to 3 per cent in the next parliament.

But the new pledge of 3.5 per cent on core defence spending means billions more pounds will eventually flow into the army, navy and air force as the UK attempts to reinforce itself against Russian aggression and prove to the US it is pulling its weight.

Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte has pushed for the 5 per cent figure — including the 1.5 per cent on adjacent security spending — partly to boost the headline number for Trump’s eyes, given the US president’s focus on Europe’s lower levels of defence spending in recent decades.

While almost all Nato members have agreed to the spending level, Spain opted out on Sunday, in a blow to the cohesiveness of the group as it tries to present a united front to Trump.

The UK’s funding will make possible many of the plans outlined in this month’s strategic defence review, which recommended a greater use of drones, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence alongside new nuclear warheads, submarines and fighter jets.

Carl Emmerson at the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the increase, in today’s terms, would be like adding approximately £30bn to the 2027 target of around spending £75bn on core defence.

The pledge will raise questions, however, over how the increase will be funded, and whether other public services will face cuts, at a time when the UK is facing a financial squeeze.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to have to raise taxes in the autumn to give her financial headroom, and the government is already facing resistance to plans to cut the UK’s welfare budget.

Starmer said the UK must “navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest” to provide security for “working people”.

“This is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to Nato and drive greater investment in the nation’s wider security and resilience,” Starmer added.

The 1.5 per cent of non-core spending has been billed by the government as “homeland security” and “resilience” investment and is expected to cover things such as civil preparedness, cyber threats, border and energy security and other areas with defence-adjacent purposes, with the details to be agreed at the Nato summit.

It was not immediately clear, however, whether this will attract any additional spending.

Once adjacent spending was included, the government said UK security spending would be 4.1 per cent of GDP by 2027 — the same year that core defence spending is expected to reach 2.6 per cent.

That implies the adjacent spending is already close to 1.5 per cent of GDP, if it is to reach that level within two years.

Downing Street said more details of the spending plans would be laid out at the Nato summit on Wednesday and Thursday, which Trump is expected to attend.

The UK played up its need to become less reliant on allies, as the Trump administration threatens to reduce support for Europe.

“In a more transactional world, the report determines that building our own sovereign, independent capabilities in strategically important areas will reduce our dependency on other nations,” the government said.

Ministers hope the additional spending will also help boost the UK economy, calling the national security strategy “a call to action that our entire society needs to become more resilient”.

It added: “Recognising that national security means more than it used to — from the security of our borders to the health of our economy, from supply chains to food prices and from safety on our streets to the online world.”

“Faced by this reality in a world of increasing ‘grey zone’ threats, we cannot take a piecemeal approach that enhances the security of one part of our critical national infrastructure but leaves gaps elsewhere for our adversaries to exploit.”

Additional reporting by Sam Fleming

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed a lower court order that required people set to be deported to countries other than their own to be allowed to challenge their deportation orders.

The order focused on a flight of several men from various countries — including Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba and Mexico — which was initially headed to South Sudan but ended up in the East African country of Djibouti in order to give the people time to dispute their final destination. The U.S. government says the men are violent criminals, convicted of crimes including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and robbery, and they don’t deserve to stay in the U.S.

But Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts last month said people must still get a so-called “credible fear” interview in their native language to be able to dispute being sent to a country they’re not originally from. He said people must get at least 15 days to challenge their deportations.

Monday’s unsigned order puts that decision on hold while the legal process continues in the lower courts. The court’s three liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.

“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution,” the dissenters wrote. “In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.”

The order is the latest example of the Supreme Court becoming the final arbiter in multiple cases of President Trump’s efforts to accelerate deportations and minimize due process.

Several migrants and U.S. detention officers awaited the court ruling while living in a converted shipping container at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, beset by high temperatures, exposure to malaria, and close proximity to “burn pits,” which emit throat-clogging smog from burning trash and human waste.

The Supreme Court’s liberal justices argued that the government’s haste in deporting people to countries like South Sudan put them at risk of torture or other unsafe conditions. “This Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion, which Kagan and Jackson joined. “I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”

Accusations of ‘wreaking havoc’

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer on May 27 asked the Supreme Court for an immediate stay of Murphy’s order, saying it is “wreaking havoc on the third country removal process.”

“The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” he wrote. Through “sensitive diplomacy,” the U.S. had convinced third countries to accept the men after their own countries refused, he said, but Murphy’s order prevents that “unless DHS first satisfies an onerous set of procedures invented by the district court” to assess whether the men might be tortured or persecuted in the country to which they’re sent.

Immigration lawyers told the Supreme Court that even criminals deserve meaningful notice and an opportunity to be heard before they’re sent to a country with dangerous conditions where they could be tortured.

Lawyers from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Human Rights First, and the National Immigration Litigation Alliance say the men set to end up in South Sudan only got notification the night before their flight.

They also say Mexico, for example, had previously accepted its own citizens deported from the U.S., suggesting that the Trump administration’s process of removing people to third countries is “intentionally punitive.” South Sudan is a politically unstable country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world.

The strategy to rely on other countries to take in U.S. deportees is not new. But the Trump administration has prioritized getting more countries to repatriate their citizens, including from China, Venezuela and Cuba, in order to more quickly deport people from the U.S.

“And the further away the better, so they can’t come back across the border,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during an April cabinet meeting.

DHS policy requires any deportee to get notice of what country they’re being sent to, “and an opportunity for a prompt screening of any asserted fear of being tortured there.”

The arguments in court have centered on how long migrants should have to contest their removal to a country. DHS says this process takes “minutes,” not weeks. In the case of the flight to South Sudan, the men got less than 24 hours’ notice. Immigration lawyers say such little time means deportees’ have little hope of arguing against a removal, especially if they don’t speak English.

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Japan’s ruling party has suffered its worst result in local assembly elections in Tokyo, as residents of the capital used the vote to protest against soaring food prices and low wage growth.

The results of Sunday’s poll underscored the challenge Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba could face next month in elections for the upper house of Japan’s national parliament.

The Liberal Democratic party, which governs at the national level in a fragile coalition, won just 22 seats in Tokyo’s 127-member metropolitan assembly. That marked a record low for the party, which entered the contest with 30 seats, and included three seats won by candidates who were previously affiliated with the party but not officially endorsed by it.

Analysts suggested that a sizeable loss for the LDP in the upper house vote on July 20 could dent its ability to govern, hand significant bargaining power to the numerous small opposition parties and even force Ishiba’s resignation.

The poll comes as Ishiba, who is battling low approval ratings, has been mired in trade talks with the US after President Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on imports from Japan. The economy has also registered record price rises, including for staples such as rice.

The Tokyo assembly election highlighted the fragmentation of Japanese politics and the rise of smaller opposition parties, analysts said.

Among the beneficiaries was the populist rightwing Sanseito party, which secured three seats for the first time. The party, which was founded in 2020, campaigned on slogans including “Don’t destroy Japan any more!”

The LDP lost its leading position in the assembly to the Tomin First no Kai — a “Tokyo-ites” party that was founded by Tokyo region governor Yuriko Koike and works in loose co-operation with the LDP. 

Koike, Japan’s most powerful local government official for the past nine years, has pushed a range of policies aimed at raising the birth rate and improving welfare. Her party secured 32 seats, including one affiliated independent.

But Tobias Harris, a political analyst at Japan Foresight, cautioned against interpreting the Tokyo assembly vote as a precursor to the contest in the upper house, which has no equivalent to Koike or her party.

However he said Tokyo’s size made it a useful gauge of the wider mood.

Tokyo’s 11.5mn voters will elect six members to the upper house and represent a large chunk of votes for candidates elected via proportional representation.

There may even be silver linings for Ishiba, added Harris, as momentum appeared to be fading from what were previously a few promising newcomers.

Sunday’s vote in Tokyo was disastrous for the populist Path to Rebirth party, led by Shinji Ishimaru, who finished second to Koike in last year’s gubernatorial election. None of the party’s 42 candidates for the assembly won a seat.