If the weirdness of Donald Trump’s first month hasn’t been enough to convince you the world has turned on its head, watching a Labour Prime Minister slash the overseas aid budget should do it. Uncharted water, terra incognita, dystopian nightmare – pick your metaphor, we’re in it. Labour promised they would reinstate spending on the overseas aid budget to 0.7 per cent of UK GDP after Boris Johnson cut it to 0.5 per cent. Instead they’re cutting it to 0.3 per cent, to fund increasing the defence budget. Has Keir Starmer gone mad? How can this be the action of a Labour Prime Minister? In a sense it isn’t. This is no longer Starmer the Labour leader, but Starmer the British Prime Minister, a man now facing one overriding priority – maintaining the security of the nation in a new world order where the invisible defensive shield of Nato has been abruptly switched off by an America First president. The biting easterly wind we are now exposed to is felt by everyone, across Europe and across political divides. A totalitarian aggressor is already at war with Europe. There’s been not a peep of disagreement from any party about the need to increase defence spending, which is set to rise further to three per cent of GDP in the 2030s. It makes you queasy to concede it, but in these alarming new circumstances, the Government does have to prioritise tanks over aid. Whether they have to hollow out the overseas aid budget to quite such an extent, however, is another question. Funding the defence boost out of existing spending is not a surprise – Starmer needed the cash fast and couldn’t borrow the required billions within his own fiscal rules – but the surprise is why target just this one budget? Why not spread the burden more fairly? With defence spending set to rise much further after 2027, it’s hard to see how other departments can avoid being trimmed further down the line. Why not just spread the reductions now, instead of singling out overseas aid for a military buzz cut? Aid isn’t a large budget but a little cash goes a long way. Many lives are saved through programmes like vaccination and malaria prevention. Some Labour MPs will be wondering why the road-building budget, say, couldn’t have been tapped for a bit of cash. There is also the strategic argument for aid. Starmer knows perfectly well that it promotes security. His own Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, recently said that American aid cuts under Donald Trump were a “big strategic mistake” as they allowed China to extend its influence. More instability means more migration. Former Labour foreign secretary and president of the International Rescue Committee aid agency David Miliband has pointed out there are 300m people in humanitarian need around the world and more than 50 civil wars going on, just as the UK, US, France and others are withdrawing aid. “That [aid cut] is going to contribute to international instability, not reduce it,” he says. So why do it like this? Targeting aid, unfortunately, was the easiest choice politically. It protects public spending here in the UK, but also helps neutralise populist attacks by Reform UK, who would bay for Labour’s blood if the potholes budget were slashed and foreign aid left in place. A regretful Lammy offers a different rationale: “that … we have had to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security”. And while its undoubtedly a retrograde step for international development and will affect Britain’s standing in some countries, there is truth in this. The Government hopes to increase the proportion of aid money being spent on actual aid by reducing the huge amount currently paying for asylum seeker hotels and remains committed to raising aid spending to 0.7 per cent of GDP once again though God knows when that will happen. At least this cut is not ideological, unlike with Boris Johnson. We can trust aid will be increased again if those pesky fiscal conditions every do allow. There were no easy choices here for Starmer, but what were the alternatives? John Swinney seems to believe that at this critical moment, the UK should give up its nuclear deterrent to free up cash for conventional weapons – in order to protect itself against a nuclear-armed tyrant. Scottish voters will draw their own conclusions about the First Minister’s grasp on reality. Others have tried not to be so nakedly political. The Liberal Democrats suggest a tax on super rich tech corporations; the Greens suggest a wealth tax. And then there is the question of whether Reeves should ease her own fiscal rules, perhaps the one about borrowing only to invest. All these measures might be necessary in the end if the UK’s military capability, in partnership with other European nations, is to meet requirements. Europe must fight its own battles from now on, quite literally. If Keir Starmer has promised higher defence spending just to try and curry favour with Donald Trump, he will likely fail. Trump first complained European countries didn’t reach the Nato minimum of two per cent of GDP in defence spending; by 2018, he was demanding they spend four per cent; now it’s five per cent (higher than the US itself at 3.4 per cent). Like Colonel Cathcart in Catch 22, forever raising the number of missions Yossarian must fly before his tour of duty can end, Trump doesn’t seem interested in coming to an agreement – probably because, as new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz puts it, America “does not care much about the fate of Europe”. This week, America even sided with Russia, North Korea and Belarus against Europe in a UN resolution on Ukraine. That’s downright scary. America for the first time in decades is being perceived in European capitals as an unreliable ally. Britain has no choice but to adapt. But cutting aid must be a temporary measure. Even in an era of protectionism and self-interest, Britain cannot just give up on its wider international role as a force for progress.