Prime Minister's Questions today was ostensibly about the Defence Investment Plan – or its absence. But Kemi Badenoch was really using the DIP in her six questions to build her narrative about Keir Starmer being unable to take any of the big decisions. He was, she said repeatedly, 'paralysed'.
Given Starmer refused in all of those questions to give any further details about the DIP other than that it would be coming 'before the Nato summit' at the start of July, Badenoch could have ended up looking like she was just churning through the same question without making progress.
But she managed to vary those questions and extract further information from the Prime Minister. He also twice avoided ruling out raising taxes to fund the DIP, which moved the story on enough to make it more than just 'Starmer won't say when defence plan due'.
✍️ Isabel Hardman
Article | https://t.co/22bYAErBQN
While we still wait on Labour government defence spending plans (the Defence Investment Plan — DIP) to finance last year’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), let’s keep in mind these salient points when it eventually appears:
1. The current £28 billion shortfall in defence spending over the next four years has nothing to do with implementing the SDR. The £28 billion is simply what’s needed to meet current defence commitments/plans.
2. So funding for SDR would have to be on top of the £28 billion — which would mean tens of billions more over the next five or so years into the early 2030s.
3. The extra money now being floated as what the government is likely to announce — £13.5 billion over four years — wouldn’t even cover half the shortfall never mind produce a penny for the SDR. It’s a pittance compared with what’s required.
4. We currently spend 2.4% GDP on defence (and even that is boosted by some statistical sleights of hand). The only current concrete plan is to go to 2.5/6% in the next financial year. Now the Treasury is saying it doesn’t even want to set 3% as a target before 2034/35 — by which time if Reeves-Starmer-Treasury have their way we will be a minor player in military matters.
5 This government is dishonest the best of times. I fear we’re about to discover that when it comes to the defence of the realm — its primary duty as a government — it is a serial liar.
Never forget TWA Flight 841.
Palestine bombed a plane, slaughtering 88 innocent human souls, including 37 Americans.
In case you were wondering: No, the PLO did not apologize or pay reparations for slaughtering Americans.
Palestinian culture.
We have nearly 2 million people unemployed in the UK.
The Government is relentlessly taxing businesses - so they can’t afford to employ people.
But now they are giving businesses £5k back per foreign worker they hire. It’s madness.
At PMQs just now Starmer refused to rule out tax rises to fund defence. But as @KemiBadenoch just said, this is because he is too weak to do what everyone knows has to be done - cut welfare to fund Defence.
Scrape your face to save the planet!
Surely there must be a better way to attach a bottle cap for recycling purposes without it jabbing people in the face?