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At today’s Prime Ministers’ Questions there was only one subject anyone was discussing. The Defence Investment Plan is supposed to be Keir Starmer’s big legacy so there is no surprise that is deeply suspect and lacking in fiscal credibility. Kemi Badenoch chose to ask all of her six questions on the subject. She began by asking about the gulf between the £15bn promised and the £28bn which John Healey wanted to then effortlessly narrowing her focus to whether Andy Burnham was signed up to a plan with a £4.7bn black hole in it. ‘Any Labour Prime Minister would stand behind this plan’, insisted Starmer. ‘Cheers Keir’, his predecessor must be thinking.
It was not just Badenoch asking about defence. The Lib Dems and even the SNP both queued up too trying to have a go. To be fair to Starmer, he had retorts at the ready, pointing out to Ed Davey that ‘he sat in a cabinet which cut defence to two per cent’ while his answer to Dave Doogan was a corker. Pointing out that the nationalists are committed to renouncing the nuclear deterrent, he ridiculed the party for its recent legal woes. ‘Their chief executive has just been jailed’, he scoffed. ‘So let’s have no more advice and sanctimonious nonsense from the SNP’. Even Tory MPs nodded to that.
