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Rishi Sunak said Sir Keir Starmer would send “exactly the wrong message” to the UK’s adversaries, such as Russia and North Korea, as the Prime Minister highlighted differences between the Tories and Labour on defence. 

Speaking to reporters in East Anglia, the Prime Minister repeated his concerns of an “axis of authoritarian states, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, who are increasingly acting together in a way that threatens our values, our interests and our security”.

He continued: “That’s why I made the decisions to increase investment in defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, because we’re living in the most dangerous and uncertain time that our country has known since the end of the Cold War.

“Just from the conversations I’ve been having at the G7, and the Ukraine peace summit, that is a view that is shared widely across the world, that’s why it’s the right thing to do to invest more in our defence, to keep everybody safe.

“Keir Starmer has not matched that pledge and that deeply concerns me because the first duty of government is to protect the country.

“In fact if Keir Starmer is elected, one of the first things he will do is head off to a Nato summit having cut British defence spending from the planned increases that I’ve announced, and I think that sends exactly the wrong message, both to our allies, where we want to lead so that they invest more in their defence as well, but also to our adversaries, like Putin, and like the North Koreans, and actually we need to deter them with strength.”