‘Put it to a vote’: Starmer demands MPs decide on troop cuts

Big cuts to troop numbers must be put to a Commons vote, Keir Starmer is demanding – warning Boris Johnson he would lose.

The Labour leader accused the prime minister of breaking an election promise to maintain the size of the Armed Forces and told him to have the “courage” to test if MPs backed him.

Sir Keir ridiculed Mr Johnson’s claim not to be making cuts, telling him: “Only this prime minister could suggest a reduction from 82,000 to 72,000 is somehow not a cut.”

And he pointed to the words of Tobias Ellwood – the Tory chair of the Commons defence committee – who had warned Conservatives would oppose the move, given the chance.

Mr Ellwood had said the cuts “if tested by a parliamentary vote, I do not believe would pass”, he pointed out, adding: “Not me – his own MPs.”

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Mr Johnson told MPs the true size of the Army would be 100,000 “including reservists”, part-time soldiers who also hold down other jobs.

And he appeared to dispute a warning by a former chief of the defence staff that the UK would “almost certainly” be unable to recapture the Falklands – Sir Keir accusing him of responding “rubbish”.

The prime minister was also rebuked by the Commons Speaker for accusing Labour MPs of being “out on the streets” at so-called ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstrations against the crackdown on protests.

Lindsay Hoyle intervened, saying: “I genuinely mean this, I do not believe any Member of Parliament would support that ‘Kill the Bill’.”

In lively exchanges – following the defence command paper released on Monday – Mr Johnson was put on the spot over a 2019 pledge not to cut the UK’s armed forces in “any form”.

He replied: “That was because what we were going to do was actually increase spending on our armed services by the biggest amount since the Cold War.”

That would amount to “£24bn modernising our armed forces, with no redundancies, keeping our Army at 100,000 if you include the reserves”.

He attacked the Labour leader for trying to elect Jeremy Corbyn, “a man who wanted to pull this country out of Nato” – but Sir Keir hit back, saying: “He’s fighting the last war.”

Later, Mr Johnson stuck to his refusal to start the promised “independent inquiry” into his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling it “an irresponsible diversion”.

The Labour MP Afzal Khan said he had lost an “entire generation” of his family, saying: “I couldn’t hold my mum’s hand as she lay dying and I recently lost both my father and mother-in-law within just days of one another.

“Grieving families like mine want and deserve to understand what happened, and if anything could have been done to prevent this tragedy.”

But the prime minister said: “We are of course committed – as soon as it’s right to do so, as soon as it wouldn’t be an irresponsible diversion of the energies of the key officials involved – to an inquiry to learn the lessons, to make sure nothing like this can ever happen again.”