To the foaming mad Brexiters crying foul that democracy has been thwarted...

[scooterscot]

Excluding USA and Canada (hopefully our allies), Russia is the world’s largest spender on “defence”. Yet the EU as a whole still dwarfs Russia.

You nailed it. Russia is not the military power that it once was, nor are the people itching to invade the west like Trump & Co. would have you believe.

US probably want EU to purchase its weapons. At the root of it all, it's about money not defence. And the US has weapons to sell.

[WTFH]

WTFH - is there an even better methodology, that you can think of and would share?

It's taking time, but yes. Separating out the difference when reporting "Europe" and the "EU", trying to find consistent figures and then doing the calc.
Table 3 of the NATO report is usable for % defence spending, but the GDP tables in that report are based on 2010 exchange rates, whereas most other sources, such as Trading Economics, use an annual exchange rate.

So, I have looked by individual country using each country's %Defence spend (Source: NATO), % Debt (Source: TE) and GDP (Source: TE) to calculate actual Debt Value, actual Defence Value, Defence Delta (i.e. 2%-current Def Spend), added these to get the Adjusted Debt and a new national New Debt %.
Then take all the countries and add up the values for actual defence value and defence delta. Put those numbers in against the actual EU GDP to calculate back the current % Defence spend, calculate the adjusted debt and then the % debt. Then compare the values with and without the UK.
The following are in billions of USD and based on December 2017 data:

UK Defence 2.12%
UK Debt 85.3%
UK GDP 2622.43
UK Debt 2236.93
UK Defence overspend (0.12%) -3.146916
UK Adjusted debt 2233.79
UK Adjusted debt 85.18%

EU inc UK Defence 1.33%
EU inc UK Debt 81.6%
EU inc UK GDP 17277.7
EU inc UK Debt 14098.6
EU inc UK Defence underspend (0.67%) 115.76
EU inc UK Adjusted debt: 14214.36
EU inc UK Adjusted debt: 82.27%

EU-UK Defence 1.19%
EU-UK Debt 80.9%
EU-UK GDP 14655.27
EU-UK Debt 11861.67
EU-UK Defence underspend (0.81%) 118.91
EU-UK Adjusted debt: 11980.58
EU-UK Adjusted debt: 81.75%

So, the UK leaving the EU, and the NATO EU members all paying 2% would increase the EU debt from 81.6% to 81.75%.
The UK dropping it's defence spend to 2% would reduce the UK debt from 85.3% to 85.18%.

Please note that my EU % Defence spend is less than the headline 1.46% in the NATO table for a couple of reasons:
1. They are basing it on Europe, not the EU (so countries such as Norway are included in their figures)
2. I have calculated up the defence spend two ways and come back with total figures of 229.95 (by adding up the calculation for each individual country) and 229.79 (based on % for the EU). I chose the lower of these to values, so it's possible that my figures for EU current defence spend are too low by $160million, which would mean the adjusted debt I have calculated is higher than it should be.

[WTFH]

For those who are TL;DR:
If UK just paid 2%, UK debt would fall by 0.12% to 85.18%
If EU NATO paid 2%, EU debt (without the UK) would rise by 0.15% to 81.75%
And if the EU NATO members keep their defence spending where it is, when the UK leaves the EU debt would fall 0.7% to 80.9%

[WTFH]

I subtracted the values from the following table from 2%, then added them up, as an 'EU bloc', since earlier in the thread you posted the total GDP of the EU-UK - I was trying to arrive at some figure for the EU defence spending deficit.
...
Does anyone have a better calculation and can show their working?
Happy to be corrected on this.

Adding up % to work out the overall % is the wrong way to go about statistics

Imagine there were just 2 countries, both with a GDP of 200.
One paid 1.5% and the other paid 1.75%
So the total they paid is 3 + 3.5 = 6.5 out of their total GDP of 400
The total they should have paid was 8
The amount they were short was 1.5.
But that the amount, not the percentage.

The percentage they paid was 6.5/400 = 1.625%.
The percentage they were short is 1.5/400 which is 0.375%. This is correct
But if you just add up the individual percentages you would get 0.5+0.25 = 0.75% This is wrong

[Bean]

Adding up % to work out the overall % is the wrong way to go about statistics

Imagine there were just 2 countries, both with a GDP of 200.
One paid 1.5% and the other paid 1.75%
So the total they paid is 3 + 3.5 = 6.5 out of their total GDP of 400
The total they should have paid was 8
The amount they were short was 1.5.
But that the amount, not the percentage.

The percentage they paid was 6.5/400 = 1.625%.
The percentage they were short is 1.5/400 which is 0.375%. This is correct
But if you just add up the individual percentages you would get 0.5+0.25 = 0.75% This is wrong

Totally get what you're saying and agree.

Thank you very much, for doing the calcs in the correct way, as I didn't manage to find sufficient time to do it.

[Whorty]

Totally get what you're saying and agree.

Thank you very much, for doing the calcs in the correct way, as I didn't manage to find sufficient time to do it.

This is basic o'level maths. 13 year old kids should be able to do this. I would really love to know what you do for a job. Clearly not IT as you'd have some maths knowledge. Not having 'sufficient time' is no reason not to know basic maths, that is that you can't just add up %'s.

I call out that you're not a real contractor - do I win my prize for finding Wally

[Old Greg]

This is basic o'level maths. 13 year old kids should be able to do this. I would really love to know what you do for a job. Clearly not IT as you'd have some maths knowledge. Not having 'sufficient time' is no reason not to know basic maths, that is that you can't just add up %'s.

I call out that you're not a real contractor - do I win my prize for spotting Wally

Sas had bean down as CSE stream calibre.

[Whorty]

Sas had bean down as CSE stream calibre.

I was going to say CSE myself, but didn't want him thinking I meant GCSE and then him accusing me of making a spelling mistake, so went for O'level instead. Of course, I wouldn't expect him to get grade A-C, Bean is definitely an E in maths (at best).