Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has worked out his excuse for refusing to say the UK will meet its target of 3% defence spending by 2030, which Healey resigned over. He told Sky News:
“Let’s say for argument’s sake, I just said yes, we will by 2030 meet 3%. The inevitable next question is: how will you fund it? And the trap that I’ve seen so many previous, particularly Conservative governments fall into is setting out what they would spend or the taxes they would cut without at the same time saying how they would pay for it. And I’m sorry, but that path leads to uncertainty, a loss of market confidence, a rising borrowing cost.
So we end up paying a heavy price if you don’t have that fiscal discipline of spelling out at the same time not just what you will spend or the taxes you would cut but also how you would pay for it. So if it feels like we’re dancing on the head of a pin a bit here, that’s why it is because we’ve got to maintain as a country and as a government that fiscal discipline because without it, we all end up paying a much higher price.”
Yesterday Burnham could only say he supported the less ambitious NATO target of 3.5% later on. Team Burnham figuring out how to manage the maelstrom of priorities at the Budget…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”