Starmer in row as MP calls for the armed forces to be 're-tasked'

Starmer pulled into Labour defence row as top MP calls for the armed forces to be ‘re-tasked as a force for peace’

• Labour was forced to declare its ‘unshakeable’ support for the Nato alliance
• Sir Keir has made a great effort to rebrand Labour as being strong on defence 

Sir Keir Starmer has been plunged into a defence row over calls by one of his frontbenchers for Britain’s armed forces to be ‘re-tasked as a force for peace’.

On the eve of a visit to the UK by US President Joe Biden on Monday, Labour was forced to declare its ‘unshakeable’ support for the Nato alliance, which is holding a key summit in Lithuania this week.

Shadow Minister Fabian Hamilton had said that using ‘our military forces not to fight wars and further conflicts but to save life’ would ‘pay back for our imperial past’.

He also branded Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent ‘utterly useless’.

Shadow Minister Fabian Hamilton had said that using ‘our military forces not to fight wars and further conflicts but to save life’ would ‘pay back for our imperial past’

The Mail on Sunday has unearthed a series of controversial remarks by Mr Hamilton since Sir Keir reappointed him in 2020 as Shadow Minister for Peace and Disarmament – a role originally given to him by Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.

They include telling a Greater Manchester Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament event: ‘Let’s use our military forces not to fight wars and further conflicts, but to save life.

‘That would be the best way we could pay back for our imperial past and some of the bad things we’ve done.’

Sir Keir has made a concerted effort to rebrand Labour as being strong on defence and patriotic after the Left-wing leadership of Mr Corbyn.

And last night, a senior Labour MP called on Sir Keir to sack Mr Hamilton.

He said: ‘Hamilton and his loony remarks are a relic of the mad Corbyn era.

Sir Keir has made a great effort to rebrand Labour as being strong on defence

‘We are trying to rebuild trust with traditional Labour voters who rightly saw Corbyn as weak on defending the country and just plain unpatriotic.’

In an attempt to calm the row, Mr Hamilton said last night: ‘Alongside my Labour colleagues, my support for Nato, our nuclear deterrent, the United Nations and our armed forces is unshakeable.’

Leeds North East MP Mr Hamilton, 68, has called for Britain to sign up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, banning all use of the arms, though Nato allies have made clear the treaty is incompatible with Nato commitments.

In April 2021, he said getting rid of our nuclear weapons ‘would make no difference whatsoever to anybody’. He has also said the UK’s permanent place on the UN Security Council was a ‘relic of the Second World War’ and ‘our imperial past’ which was not sustainable. In a lecture in November 2020, he said: ‘We could re-task our military, from fighting wars for our own self-importance or self-interest… I’m suggesting we re-task our military as a force for good, a force for peace.’

In July 2021, Mr Hamilton conceded that the Armed Forces’ job at home was ‘to defend our country’.

But ‘worldwide’, he added, ‘let’s re-task our excellent military… to save life, rather than take life’.

At the same Conflict and Global Britain event, he admitted ‘you may say I’m living in cloud cuckoo land here, but unless you’ve got ideals, you’ll never achieve anything’.

Last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed he had said he would be ‘quite happy’ if Russian hackers knocked out Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

The comments, dating from 2019, led to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace branding him ‘treasonous’ for apparently siding with Vladimir Putin.

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