The Budget was lots of things – dishonest, divisive and anti-growth – but despite Rachel Reeves’s best efforts to put a positive spin on it no one was convinced. 

Nowadays everyone has realised that the truth is never in the Budget speech itself but in the Red Book that is handed out once the Chancellor sits down. It’s in there you find the reality.

So when Rachel Reeves delivered her announcement on Defence I was keen to see the detail. Sadly all was not as it had seemed. The headline increase of £3 billion included money for Ukraine. On my watch that was not allowed.

From the start of my tenure as Secretary of State for Defence I was determined to be honest about both the threat we face and the state of our Armed Forces. I believed that if I was to be credible I would have to be clear about the way that both Labour and the Tories had hollowed out Defence over the past 20 years.

As an example, I admitted openly that it was total nonsense to suggest that we could deploy a full armoured division to war as we had promised Nato. 

Some were surprised. Some wanted to shoot the messenger. But the fact was that secretaries of state and service chiefs had carried on this unhelpful charade for many years. It allowed the Treasury and No 10 to get away with not funding us properly and left the armed services keeping up appearances. We had become the “Mrs Bouquet” of Nato.

Regretfully some of the former generals who fill the comment pages criticising the government of the day (after they have retired) were the very same who went along with the illusion. I wasn’t prepared to. It fooled no one – not our service personnel, not the Russians nor the USA. I remember after one onslaught by a former general in the media about the reduction in the size of the Army, I asked my then team – “Surely they understand medium sized and perfectly formed is better than big and hollow?”

So I set out to get real money, be more honest and start the process of modernisation. The most important task was to change government culture. Defence has to be paid for. The threat is growing and we will have to change priorities. 

By the end of the last Conservative government I think everyone had got it. Rishi Sunak was the best convert. He overruled Treasury efforts to delay or cheat on achieving 2.5 per cent of GDP for Defence and set a time to get there.

Sadly all that is gone and insiders tell me Rachel Reeves is resisting any serious action at all. If she is forced to commit to an uplift, 2034 might be a date. 

Just after becoming Prime Minister, Sir Keir said: “It is for me to be absolutely clear that the first duty of my Government is security and defence.”

Duty it may be – priority it isn’t. Fifteen other departments got bigger spending increases. Labour has shown very clearly that it doesn’t care about Defence.

This matters because the one thing both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris agree on is that Nato allies must pull our weight. 

US politicians often ask: “Why should US citizens forgo health or roads funding so the UK and other European nations can raid their own defence budgets?”

At the moment the US is on the hook to send over 300,000 troops to Nato’s rescue if Russia were to attack. That kind of commitment, which gives us real security, is unlikely to continue if we don’t step up and do our share.

Whoever becomes President is likely to demand that America’s allies spend 2.5 or even 3 per cent of GDP on defence. If we don’t, American commitment to Nato – and with it our security – will be in peril.

Ben Wallace served as Secretary of State for Defence from 2019 to 2023 and is a former officer in the Scots Guards