Starmer to take penultimate PMQs as he faces backlash over ‘poisoned chalice’ defence investment plan
Good morning. Yesterday Keir Starmer published the defence investment plan (Dip), which was probably the last substantial announcement of his premiership. Today he is facing what will probably be his second last PMQs (he is expected to be at the Nato summit next Wednesday, and he’ll have his swansong on 15 July), and the session is likely to be dominated by complaints about the Dip.
Broadly, there are three distinct criticisms.
1) ‘It doesn’t raise defence spending by anything like enough.’ This is what military chiefs (in private) and retired military leaders (on TV) have been saying for ages. Yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies in effect agreed. In a briefing, it said the rise in defence spending under Labour had been “substantial”. But the problem is that last year, under pressure from Donald Trump, Keir Starmer and other Nato leaders committed to raising defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 and, as the IFS explains, despite the increase announced yesterday, there is as yet no credible path to get there.
2) ‘It is not even properly funded.’ As Kiran Stacey and Dan Sabbagh explain in the Guardian’s splash story, the Dip amounts to a £15bn spending increase – but there is as yet no explanation as to where the money will come from to fund almost £5bn of this.
That is a problem for Andy Burnham, who was not briefed on the black hole ahead of the publication of the Dip yesterday, and for his chancellor. Last night Liam Fox, the former Tory defence secretary, said that Starmer was leaving a “poisoned chalice” for his successor.
3) ‘And the bits that are funded are in part funded by cuts that are not popular.’ Some of the Dip is being funded by the cancellation of road projects, and this has angered Labour MPs whose constituencies are affected. Hamish Falconer is a Foreign Office minister, and normally ministers don’t criticise government decisions in public. But he is also MP for Lincoln and last night he posted a message on social media saying he was “disappointed” by the threat to the A46 Newark bypass widening scheme. In the Commons Jonathan Davies, MP for Mid Derbyshire, said shelving the A38 Derby Junctions scheme would be “a brake on economic growth”. And last night Claire Ward, the Labour mayor for the East Midlands, complained her region was disproportionately affected. She told the the Cathy Newman Show on Sky:
What I’m complaining about today is that the East Midlands would appear to be the only region that has been told it is sacrificing its road investments programme in order to be able to contribute to the Dip.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: MPs hold a debate in Westminster Hall on the case for banning MPs from having second jobs.
Morning: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, is on a visit in Cambridgeshire.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
2.15pm: Police chiefs give evidence to the joint committee on human rights on the policing of protests.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Andy Burnham has not yet become PM, but already the rightwing papers are exploring how best to present him negatively in the eyes of their readers.
Yesterday the Daily Mail splashed on a story saying Burnham wants “to run Britain part-time from Manchester”. The 10-word intro managed to simultaneously imply that Burnham would be working from home a bit, not fully committed to the job, and anti-London.
Today the Telegraph has got an even more ingenious line of attack. It is running a headline saying: “Burnham could ‘turbocharge North-South house price divide’.” The story says house prices are growing at 3.9% in the north and north-west, compared to just 0.1% in the south-east, and it quotes someone from a property search company saying: “A huge injection of government spending into the north could create a Burnham bounce that accelerates northern price growth further.” While this sounds like a grave injustice to homeowners in the south (where Telegraph readers live), they might have been reassured if the article had included figures showing that house prices on average are far higher in the south than in the north. Burnham’s political project is all about reducing that divide, not turbocharging it.
Andy Burnham’s team is “properly furious” about the £5bn black hole in the funding for the defence investment plan, according to Sam Coates from Sky News. On his podcast this morning, Coates said:
I am old enough to remember when Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer came into government complaining from every hilltop that the Tories did just similar by cutting budgets and failing to fully fund them.
It’s no wonder that Team Burnham are, for the first time in this transition I think, properly furious, right? They’ve really avoided briefing until now, but it was made clear to me yesterday they are cross about this because they didn’t know and it’s a big headache.
To be fair, compared to some of the other budget and public policy problems facing a Burnham administration, having to find £5bn over four years (it’s a cumulative figure, not an annual figure) may not be welcome but it’s hardly the biggest challenge they will be facing.
Housebuilding in Scotland at lowest level for almost a decade, figures show
Robyn Vinter
Robyn Vinter is a Guardian reporter covering Scotland.
Housebuilding in Scotland is down to its lowest level in nearly a decade, official figures show.
Apart from 2020-21, when Covid impacted housebuilding, completions were the lowest since 2016-17, Scottish government statistics show.
A total of 17,268 new homes were built, and 14,955 homes were started in Scotland in 2025-26, a 10% and 4% drop respectively on the previous year.
Critics have said at the current rate of progress, the Scottish government’s target to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 will be missed by a significant margin.
Scottish Labour housing spokesperson Mark Griffin said:
Scotland’s housing emergency is causing misery for families all over the country and this fall in housebuilding will fan the flames of the crisis.
The Lib Dem MSP Morven-May MacCallum said the “chopping and changing of housing policy must end”. She added:
Too many Scots have nowhere to live or are paying through the nose. Housebuilding is going in the wrong direction and this needs to change.
Announcing spending plan while deferring saying where all money coming from ‘not unusual’, says minister
Luke Pollard, a defence minister, has been giving interviews this morning. Speaking to Times Radio, he defended the government’s decision to defer explaining how around one third of the £15bn defence investment plan (Dip) will be funded until the budget in the autumn. He claimed that leaving a hole in spending plans like this was “not unusual”.
He said:
We’ve announced a £15bn increase in defence spending, which is a huge boost for our readiness and helps us buy the kit and equipment that we need.
Of the £15 billion extra spending power that we now have, the Treasury set out how £10bn or so of that will be spent … £4.7bn will be set out at the autumn budget. And that’s not unusual for governments to do.
When Rachel Reeves announced a U-turn on the winter fuel payments cut last summer, costing £1.25bn, she also put off explaining how it would be funded until the budget later in the year.
In his interviews Pollard also declined to comment on reports that Andy Burnham and his team were not told about the £5bn black hole in the plans until the figures were published yesterday. Pollard told the Today programme that he only saw details of how the £15bn would be raised yesterday, and that he was “not involved” in the talks with the Burnham operation.
Burnham is expected to become PM in just under three weeks.
Ministers ‘furious’ over cuts to road projects to fund defence plan
Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about the backlash over the proposed road scheme cuts that will part-fund the defence investment plan.
Starmer to take penultimate PMQs as he faces backlash over ‘poisoned chalice’ defence investment plan
Good morning. Yesterday Keir Starmer published the defence investment plan (Dip), which was probably the last substantial announcement of his premiership. Today he is facing what will probably be his second last PMQs (he is expected to be at the Nato summit next Wednesday, and he’ll have his swansong on 15 July), and the session is likely to be dominated by complaints about the Dip.
Broadly, there are three distinct criticisms.
1) ‘It doesn’t raise defence spending by anything like enough.’ This is what military chiefs (in private) and retired military leaders (on TV) have been saying for ages. Yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies in effect agreed. In a briefing, it said the rise in defence spending under Labour had been “substantial”. But the problem is that last year, under pressure from Donald Trump, Keir Starmer and other Nato leaders committed to raising defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 and, as the IFS explains, despite the increase announced yesterday, there is as yet no credible path to get there.
2) ‘It is not even properly funded.’ As Kiran Stacey and Dan Sabbagh explain in the Guardian’s splash story, the Dip amounts to a £15bn spending increase – but there is as yet no explanation as to where the money will come from to fund almost £5bn of this.
That is a problem for Andy Burnham, who was not briefed on the black hole ahead of the publication of the Dip yesterday, and for his chancellor. Last night Liam Fox, the former Tory defence secretary, said that Starmer was leaving a “poisoned chalice” for his successor.
3) ‘And the bits that are funded are in part funded by cuts that are not popular.’ Some of the Dip is being funded by the cancellation of road projects, and this has angered Labour MPs whose constituencies are affected. Hamish Falconer is a Foreign Office minister, and normally ministers don’t criticise government decisions in public. But he is also MP for Lincoln and last night he posted a message on social media saying he was “disappointed” by the threat to the A46 Newark bypass widening scheme. In the Commons Jonathan Davies, MP for Mid Derbyshire, said shelving the A38 Derby Junctions scheme would be “a brake on economic growth”. And last night Claire Ward, the Labour mayor for the East Midlands, complained her region was disproportionately affected. She told the the Cathy Newman Show on Sky:
What I’m complaining about today is that the East Midlands would appear to be the only region that has been told it is sacrificing its road investments programme in order to be able to contribute to the Dip.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: MPs hold a debate in Westminster Hall on the case for banning MPs from having second jobs.
Morning: Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, is on a visit in Cambridgeshire.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
2.15pm: Police chiefs give evidence to the joint committee on human rights on the policing of protests.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
