As Andy Burnham travelled down to London from Manchester on Monday having set out his vision for the country should he become PM, Sir Keir Starmer was hosting the Nato chief Mark Rutte for lunch in No 10.
The Prime Minister was meeting the secretary general having finally put the finishing touches to his long-awaited Defence Investment Plan that would spell out how the UK will arm itself over the next 10 years in the face of growing global threats.
Little did Burnham know that the “Dip”, as it is called in Whitehall, contains enough fiscal ordinance to blow up the Makerfield MP’s economic plans before he has even set foot in Downing Street.
Shorts
The man tipped as the prime minister-in-waiting confirmed on Thursday that he had been blindsided by a £4.7bn blackhole at the heart of the plan, as The i Paper had first reported. “I didn’t have all of the details, I wasn’t in all the discussions,” he told LBC.
