How Trump-Nato row could lead to tightened European security and defence

“You have to be honest about the fact that defence budgets that range between 1.5 and 2 per cent are totally inadequate,” said Ian Bond, the deputy director of the London-based Centre for European Reform. “And you’ve got to get up to 3 per cent that you’re seeing now in the Baltic states, Finland and Poland.

“What the war in Ukraine is showing is that actually, mass still matters a lot in warfare.” Mr Bond added that Britain could no longer rely on the much-vaunted “special relationship” with the US. “Since the war in Afghanistan, there have been more and more American military complaints about how underwhelming the British military contribution has been,” he said. “We talk a much better game than we have played for quite a long time.”

This, he says, could prompt Britain to move faster towards military and security cooperation with the EU, especially if Labour wins the UK general election later this year. “But it would be on EU terms. There is probably an assumption in the UK that we can just sort of roll up and say, ‘Well, we’re the British, we’re special.’ And I suspect that the EU would just respond by saying: ‘the British are not special’.”