Rachel Reeves told an investors’ conference last night that “borrowing can’t be the only answer” to hiking defence spending:
“The money has to come from somewhere… Everyone can see the challenges. We are spending 2.6% of GDP from next April and the pressures are only going in one direction.”
Reeves is currently battling John Healey and the MoD over the year-delayed Defence Investment Plan. The Treasury is refusing to formally commit to spending 3% on defence by 2030. There is a £28 billion funding shortfall for defence and proposals have included £10 billion of cuts, especially to the capital budgets of DESNZ and DfT. Some in government are trying to push the total funding increase below £13 billion…
Some co-conspirators may remember Reeves speaking to the CBI in November 2024, where she said she was “not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”:
“We’ve now drawn a line under the fiction peddled by the previous government. We’ve put our public finances back on a firm footing. And we’ve now set the budgets for public services for the duration of this parliament. Public services now need to live within their means because I’m really clear. I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes. And that is why at this Budget we did wipe the slate clean to put public finances and public services on a firm footing and as a result we won’t have to do a budget like this ever again.”
The welfare mammoth sits untouched…
Reform’s plan:
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Impose substantial fines for fly-tipping and ensure proper enforcement.
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Rekindle civic pride in our communities through a National Action Day.
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Make tackling littering a key part of planning requirements.
The latest from More in Common has Reform up a point with Labour and the Tories tied, down two points and one point respectively:
| Reform UK | 30% | |
| Labour | 20% | |
| Conservative | 20% | |
| Lib Dem | 12% | |
| Green | 11% | |
| Other/Ind | 3% | |
| SNP | 3% | |
Concurrently Farage’s personal net approval ratings have dropped to their lowest since the election on -20. Starmer is on -47, Polanski -25, Davey -10. Badenoch leads the pack on -8…
Masked rioters set fire to houses and vehicles last night in Belfast in the aftermath of the ‘attempted beheading’ knife attack on Monday. The fire service has so far responded to 62 incidents across the city. The second night of disorder in just the last eight days, following the scenes in Southampton after the sentencing of Henry Nowak’s killer.
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) chief constable Jon Boutcher said the suspect is believed to have travelled from Sudan via Paris and Dublin before arriving in Belfast by bus in February 2023. He then applied for asylum and was granted leave to remain in the UK until 2028.
Hat-tip: Charlie Peters
The government’s flagship “single front door” for international finance, which was sold as a public-private partnership drawing in the City’s biggest firms, has no private sector staff involvement.
At its October 2025 launch, the Office for Investment: Financial Services was billed as “a public-private partnership” bringing together the OfI, HM Treasury, No10, the PRA, the FCA, the City of London Corporation, and “secondees from leading professional services firms.” Guido’s FOI Unit can reveal the private sector half never turned up…
As of last month the unit’s secondees were: two from the Treasury, two from the FCA, and two from the PRA. None from a professional services firm or the City of London Corporation…
The government repeatedly described the wider Office for Investment as “a joint unit of HM Treasury, the Department for Business and Trade, and Number 10.” Guido’s FOI Unit has found that No10 claims it has no involvement, and the Treasury pays nothing to its running costs…
Press releases at its launch claimed it could bring in £10 billion – the unit confirms it has no such target. Meanwhile Santander boss warns that the British tax regime on banks as making “no economic sense” with additional punitive levies and the threat of more bank taxes from Reeves, who is pitching to the left. No number of potemkin joint units could fix that damage…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”
