Defence minister Luke Pollard defended Starmer for leaving a £4.7 billion black hole in the Defence Investment Plan to be funded by Burnham in his first Budget this year. Pollard told Sky News:
“So it’s not unusual for governments to make announcements saying this is what we’ll spend and then to complete the details of that at the next budget. You all know that the last government used to do that fairly frequently… they announced the shared prosperity fund – a much bigger fund level of spend than the the 4.7 billion we’re talking about here in 2023 or the when they introduced the bus cap in 2022. It’s pretty normal…
It will be for the next Chancellor to decide how to make those decisions about the 4.7 and also in the spending review in 2027 about how we increase our defence spending from 2.7% of GDP up to 3.5% of GDP.”
That may not be how Team Burnham sees it…
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.”