Starmer unveils £15 billion Defence Investment Plan
I mean, it does look like America has demanded an explicit figure in military spending - most of it, I’d assume, from US arms companies - with threats of what will happen if we don’t pony up, doesn’t it. If it isn’t that, then it’s weird how much it looks like it.
flyingrodent79It’s already bad enough that we’re collaborating in America’s destruction of the Gaza Strip and worse that we’ve given them use of our air bases for their lunatic wars. But the entire political/military/media set crawling for the Donald… it doesn’t look great, does it.
Metal Gear Solidarity15My big wonder is how much certain suspended members of the House of lords slash former generals are getting paid to go on the news and tell people The Russians are stomping up to the border and we're better off with starving children
Kaiser of Crisps13I think you've hit the nail on the head. There is no evidence defence bods have sat down, analysed the threat & determined what kit & personnel are needed to meet it, then calculated the cost. It's always been, "We need to spend x-percent of GDP" (in reality, "We have been told we need...etc.").
Kaiser of Crisps7Ultimately, as long as we remain vassals to the US, this country's problems will never even begin to be addressed. Any govt that does not recognise this & does not begin the process of divorcing the UK from the US is not serious & cannot be trusted.
Mill Glen7Does seems strange that these non-negotiable spending commitments seem to have popped up from nowhere, that there’s this plan that is fixed rigid and absolutely has to be followed to the letter, a rule that does not apply to any other plan that the government has made, either now or in the past.
Former Pingu Child Actor (BANISHED)5That is 100% what is happening.
(This is exactly what Keir Starmer has just announced he's doing)
James Ball48"cutting capital budgets across the board to pay for defence – as has been widely reported – is a choice to backtrack on one of this government’s headline achievements to date: beginning to reverse historic underinvestment in economic and (especially) public service infrastructure."
Dr Phoenix CS Andrews4Cutting energy projects feels too on the nose
Zach Elsbury2All because his Chancellor made an unsustainable (and arrogant) manifesto commitment and has refused to meaningfully raise the needed funds.
Philip Creegan1What a masterstroke to go out on.
EXC: Andy Burnham was briefed on the Defence Investment Plan before it was published. But I understand he was *not* told that he would have to find an extra £4.7bn to fund it in his first budget. This has come as a surprise today.
John Holland17It's not his budget, it's the UK's budget. And Burnham (and a lot of others) will have to learn quickly that changing PM doesn't result in more money.
La Reine des Metaphores15Oh dear. Welcome to the real world Andy?
Laurette 💙🇨🇦🇲🇽🇪🇺🇺🇦🐸11Imagine having a £20 billion deficit when you win a GE & come into Government after 14 years of Tory destruction. Imagine also that the press couldn't give a damn & tried to downplay the size of the deficit. I'm Interested to know when he was officially crowned PM 🤔
Dexter Crisp10"HS2 not going to Manchester? Well, we can fuck that off for starters"
Claire S (UK not USA)6Is I understand another name for unnamed source?????
Jane Harbison3Oh -it’s the Guardian again -okay who is briefing you now ? Which one ?
Michael93liquid Starmerism: going out on a big announcement about tough choices the party has to make, but the amount of money announced is somehow both more than he’s actually funded and less than it needs to be. he’s competitively useless
Arthur Snell54Yeah well it’s a tough gig being PM of a broke country with pretensions to global power.
Chairman Moët50I read a lot of sci-fi in my teenage years but I never read a dystopian fantasy where every successive prime minister of the UK Jeremy Hunt-ed their successor from now until the planet melted in 2045
Ciaran45Really emphasises how similar to Boris Starmer is. Boris once successfully blocked Sunak from the leadership via Truss, made decisions based on personal pettiness on the way out (sacking Gove), and also wanted to be NATO Secretary-General after resigning
Hetan Shah41Odds just shortened on Burnham appointing Starmer as his surprise pick for Chancellor
Jess O'Thomson40This current state of governance is utterly baffling.
Dean Hochlaf31This feels relatively minor compared to the departmental cuts Starmer and Reeves stored up for the final years of this Parliament
Altreik25A fitting end to a failure of a government.
Lee Hurley22I guess Labour aren't having a leadership contest bsky.app/profile/kira...
LiLBaz18You mean the petty husk of a man whose entire political career was built upon screwing over political rivals is concluding his tenure as PM by screwing over the incoming PM who is a political rival? Never
PM Starmer today on the Defence Investment Plan He's announced a £15bn increase in def spending on top of existing plans, taking it to almost £300bn over next 4 years Annual defence spending rising from £54bn (two years ago) to almost £80bn by 2029, a 27% real-terms rise 3% of GDP next Parliament
Westerns UK11Lest we forget the TORIES who defunded our defence, in fact they defunded everything apart from what they and their friends pocketed
Sylvia Booth7It won’t be enough for Kemi ( let’s go to war with Iran! ) Badenoch. Even though her Government hollowed out spending on defence. All we will see in the media is Kemi saying - it’s not enough.
Jack London6In 22/23 the annual defence budget was £52.8Bn (£57Bn in 2026 money) So this is a real terms increase, and an increase in excess of what the Tories projected
Mel Bartley2When you look back at how soft our scum media were on the long list of Tory disasters over 14 years, you realise they are just in the business of keeping the Tories in govt. Maybe they will need a coalition with Reform so as to get the racist vote.
Chris 🤍💛💙1Why didn’t he do that earlier? Stop Healey resigning and giving the press another feeding frenzy.
Me waiting for the actual Defence Investment Plan document to be published so I can finally read the gd thing
What good are notebooks?1One would imagine Sir Lindsay Hoyle is equally frustrated, given that an outgoing Prime Minister who talked eloquently about orderly transition has gone and run his mouth at a press event on the soil of a major sovereign defence manufacturer.
Andy Scollick1I think Jarvis has to read out the best bits in the House before it is published.
Keir Starmer will shortly unveil the Defence Investment Plan. @drbenpaxton.bsky.social recently commented on defence spending, arguing that the cobbling together of capital cuts to fund defence would be a failure of fiscal policy making www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/slic...
Tim 🌱☕️🏉🏏☀️🌧5All of this equating of government finances with household finances is very annoying. Please stop. The government does not need to rob Peter to pay Paul.
theologically.bsky.social1What I find frustrating is Europe spends 3.5 times more on defence than the Russia. We haven’t got a funding issue, we have a co-ordination issue.
Scree1MAD without the M. Our whole social fabric is collapsing. There is almost no chance of Russian invasion. Yes? Yet there is 100% chance we cannot get a hospital appointment in time, our kids will leave school with crime their only prospect, people die on the streets unable to eat.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has approved an additional £15 billion increase in the country's defense budget. 👇
OSINTRadar7🔻 According to reports, to help finance the increase, the government has paused or indefinitely delayed several major regional highway projects. It has also reduced state subsidies for green energy and cut funding allocated for infrastructure modernization.
Moovelo1Yeah that'll help sickness, poverty and the treasury.
