Starmer has scraped together £10.3 billion over four years, mostly by siphoning off from other departments’ budgets. The funding explainer states that a further £4.7 billion “will be confirmed at Budget 2026.” There you go Andy…
There are also £10.7 billion of “efficiencies” which the MOD admits are mostly guesswork. Table 21 in the annex breaks the savings into “high maturity” and “lower maturity” – or hoped for. Of the £7 billion resource savings, £2 billion is high maturity. Of the £3.7 billion capital savings, £0.4 billion is. So £8.4 billion of the £10.7 billion rests on plans the MOD itself classifies as low maturity and aspirational…
The efficiencies themselves are vague. A “new defence operating model,” cutting civil service workforce costs by 10%, automation, “greater use of AI,” and unspecified savings in acquisition. Usual guff…
Project Royal Oak to upgrade naval bases is also double-counted with the nuclear budget. A footnote admits “some elements of Project Royal Oak expenditure are related to submarine infrastructure, and as such are also included in DNE’s total DIP figures.” So the £26billion Royal Oak figure and the £63.6billion nuclear figure overlap…
“Buy British” is undefined and unaccounted for. The plan promises a “buy British by default” approach and a new offsets regime – both “subject to consultation” and hedged with “remaining consistent with our legal obligations.” Buying British usually costs more…
Even Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said in the Commons that defence spending at the next spending review will be the “number one priority. We will need to do more – we need to spend more on defence.” Healey also thinks it isn’t enough despite the “uplift”…
Badenoch said at her speech on Monday morning: “We are absolutely ready to fight a general election. We say the results in Aberdeen South: 50% of the vote. Because we can unite the country… It’s about uniting the country, for God’s sake, behind a centre-right agenda.”