Keir Starmer has left Andy Burnham with a £5 billion funding headache.Andy Burnham has been left stunned after it Keir Starmer handed him a £5 billion black hole in the government’s defence spending plans.
The PM-in-waiting was briefed in advance of the publication of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) on Tuesday.
It set out plans to boost the defence budget by an additional £15bn by the end of the decade.
But in a written statement to parliament, chancellor Rachel Reeves said only two-thirds of that sum – £10.3 billion – had been identified, while the remaining £4.7 billion would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanc...
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