UKIP to Boost UK Military Spending if Wins Elections

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) pledges to increase UK military spending if the party wins May’s general election, according to a statement published on Tuesday.

According to a statement, UKIP wants the Treasury to spend an extra £16 billion ($23.8 billion) on defense over the course of the next parliament, financed by decreasing the UK's overseas aid budget.

It will allow the United Kingdom to fulfil the NATO requirement of two percent of country’s GDP being allocated to defense every year, the party claimed in the statement.

Among other measures the party vows to take in accordance with its newly invented slogan “UKIP is the party of defense," is the establishment of a Veterans' Administration and the introduction of a new National Service Medal for everyone who has been in the army, together with some social privileges.

“We will give our service men and women more funds, more respect and more support,” a new UKIP poster on the subject, also unveiled today, states.

The UK general election is scheduled for May 7, 2015. The British electorate will elect representatives to sit in the House of Commons, the country's lower house of parliament, for the next five years.

According to a BBC tracker, measuring party support, the two main rivals in the upcoming elections are the Conservative Party and the Labour party, accounting for 34 and 33 percent of UK voting preferences respectively. UKIP, who are demanding a referendum on UK membership of the European Union be held this year, polls third with 13 percent of respondents intending to cast their ballot for them.