The pattern is unmistakable. In Berlin, Friedrich Merz tears up Germany’s fiscal rulebook to pump billions into the Bundeswehr. In Paris, Emmanuel Macron stands on an airbase in Luxeuil-les-Bains, promising new nuclear-capable Rafale jets. And in London, Keir Starmer’s Labour quietly shaves £5 billion off the welfare budget while finding the cash to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.
The justifications are well-rehearsed. Europe, we are told, is waking up to a new era of strategic threats. Russia under Putin is belligerent, unpredictable, and rearming. The United States under Trump is unreliable, isolationist, and increasingly transactional in its alliances. For the first time since 1945, European leaders are forced to consider the possibility of major war without guaranteed American backing. Macron, always the boldest in his pronouncements, has openly suggested that France’s nuclear deterrent could provide a security umbrella for Europe. Germany, long wedded to its post-war pacifism, is now exempting military spending from its constitutional debt brake. Even in Britain, where defence spending never truly fell out of favour, Starmer’s government is committing billions more to the armed forces while telling disabled claimants that the country can no longer afford to support them.
The far right in both Germany and France has struggled to position itself within this new consensus. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), whose electorate skews older and economically nationalist, has been forced into an awkward contortion: supporting military expansion in principle but opposing the way it is financed. Merz, by forcing his rearmament plan through the Bundestag before the next election, ensured that the AfD had no role in shaping it, further fuelling their claims of a “democratic coup.” They rage against the erosion of Germany’s post-war fiscal discipline while simultaneously calling for a stronger border force and greater investment in “internal security.”
In France, Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National (RN) have taken a more muted approach. Macron’s nuclear ambitions sit uneasily with the RN’s nationalist instincts. While the party has long supported French military strength, the idea that France’s nuclear deterrent might one day extend to Germany or Poland provokes discomfort. Macron, in his grand European visions, appears increasingly comfortable with the idea that French missiles could deter Russian aggression against Warsaw or Berlin—Le Pen, by contrast, has little interest in France paying to defend anyone but itself. Instead, she has focused her criticism on Macron’s domestic energy policy, attacking his nuclear expansion plans as an economic distraction rather than a strategic necessity.
But the real story is not about the far right. It is about the quiet, seamless way in which the rules of European governance have been rewritten. For years, we were told that fiscal discipline was non-negotiable. That borrowing beyond a strict threshold was reckless. That the state must be lean, efficient, and cost-conscious. The European Commission demanded compliance. The Bundesbank enforced austerity. Successive British governments cut services to the bone, warning that there simply wasn’t the money to maintain them.
Yet when the issue at hand is not social spending but military procurement, the calculus changes. In Germany, the Bundeswehr gets a blank cheque while pensioners are told to work longer. In France, billions flow to defence contractors while the state struggles to reduce costs for its citizens. In Britain, Starmer’s Labour tells disability claimants that “tough choices” must be made while announcing that the defence budget will be expanded.
This is not a critique of the need for European security. Few would argue that an emboldened Russia can be ignored, or that a second Trump presidency wouldn’t bring serious instability to NATO. But the speed with which governments have found money for war, when they spent years insisting there was no money for anything else, is striking.
For the British left, this is depressingly familiar. The NHS remains underfunded. Schools crumble. Transport networks degrade. Wages stagnate. The cost of living crisis continues. Yet there is always money for aircraft, submarines, and hypersonic missiles. And while the far right complains about debt, they never object to what it is being spent on—only that they weren’t the ones spending it.
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