Speaker 1The Telegraph. £10 worth of cuts to the army.
Speaker 2Could defence spending be the great undoing of hypocritical Healey's budget? Tim, we can now proudly say that our YouTube Daily Tea Plus membership is in the hundreds.
Speaker 1Hundreds, because when I last looked it was one hundred.
Speaker 2Well, that's why I'm saying we can say it's in the hundreds-ish. We need some more people, but we're going to do a Q&A later this week, so you can ask. Is there anything you like about the budget, state of the nation, politics, our unique dress sense, your wardrobe, my hairdo? Anything you like, you can ask us.
Speaker 1Is this thing going to evolve inch by inch into an OnlyFans situation?
Speaker 2Well, maybe we'd get more viewers.
Speaker 1Because I think everything's going that way. The Prime Minister is going to strip soon. I'm warning you, it will happen.
Speaker 2Some people, there's a market for that. Not with me. Not me. But what do you think, if we did this podcast in our underwear, we'd get more hits?
Speaker 1I think we'd get taken down.
Speaker 2I don't know.
Speaker 1I think there's a European law against that.
Speaker 2I'm sure my children wouldn't agree with it. Speaking of whom, how down are you with the Gen Zs?
Speaker 1Not very. No.
Speaker 2Not very. Were you ever down with your own generation, let alone the Gen Zs?
Speaker 1I've always hated the young.
Speaker 2Right. Even when you were young.
Speaker 1I've always preferred the company of the old. And the thing is, the sad thing is that the vintage of the old has declined. Yeah. Because when you and I were young, the old had fought in a war.
Speaker 2Exactly. Exactly. My granddad.
Speaker 1Now, at best, they went to the Isle of Wight Music Festival in 1970. That's right. Which is still interesting. I think there's a very anti-Boomer vibe out there. Yes. I like Boomers. I love them. They were really interesting people.
Speaker 2My dad's one. Your mum's one.
Speaker 1Yeah, but they marched at Aldermaston. Yeah. You know, they had free love. Yeah. They did really interesting things.
Speaker 2My mum got off with the lead singer of Free.
Speaker 1There you go.
Speaker 2Yeah. By the way, when I think of you as a toddler, I do imagine you in a little tweed suit with a little bow tie. No. Were you that child?
Speaker 1No, I wasn't. But my mother was, is a follower of fashion. So we always looked like the decade we were in. So family photos are a history of fashion.
Speaker 2I tell you what, that is something for the Daily T Plus YouTube membership, isn't it? Our childhood photos.
Speaker 1But what I did used to wear, which was very big in the 80s, was a red 1C anorak, if that makes sense. Yes. Yes. You looked like a big red star. Yeah. For some reason, that was very in in the 80s.
Speaker 2And that fitted in with your ideology at the time. I was born, as you know, in a twin set and pearls. Yes. Which was fun for my mother. We're talking about Gen Z love-ins because, did you catch Ladbible? Oh, by the way, should we move the teapot? I'll ask you a question, then we'll move the teapot towards you, depending on your answer.
Speaker 1Can we explain to people what Ladbible is?
Speaker 2Ladbible is a online media organisation for. for young lads and lasses, Gen Zs, talking about the issues of the day, but also talking about entertainment and culture.
Speaker 1Andy Burnham's. It's the word for anyone who.
Speaker 2It's the word for 2026, but I think slightly cleaner and not quite.
Speaker 1No one in our staff, no one in our production team will know what the word is. But it's not. I'll do anything to get on TV.
Speaker 2Well, hang on. On the word, people were. Just to snog their grannies. snogging grannies, yeah. Also, people were very high on drugs. I'm not sure. Yes. It's a bit cleaner than that, and it's meant to be kind of floating intelligent ideas and having debates about. Yes. the issues that really matter. Yes. And the way they do that is that they have a pint each, and in this case, it was water. I mean, Andy Burnham thinks he's a man of the people and likes pork scratchings, but no matter. And it was like asking questions and then moving the pint in the direction of strongly agree or strongly disagree. So it's like, have you seen Ladbible? Do you think it's good? Strongly agree. We're moving teapots. Yes. But of course, Andy Burnham's doing this on the back of, I'm on the train and I get really irritated by people's music, so we're going to crack down on that, and then we've had this Angela Rayner announcing this, oh, we're going to crack down on parking cowboys, and if you're five minutes late to get back to the car park, then don't worry, the government's going to protect you.
Speaker 1Now, just to be fair to the Prime Minister, this is about fixing the little irritants in your life, which add to the cost of living.
Speaker 2Burnham and Rayner are little irritants in my life, but carry on.
Speaker 1And I have never understood why there is a tolerance for music on trains. No. And I don't understand why action hasn't been taken sooner to do something about it. In the very early days,
Speaker 2can I just tell you this, it sounds apocryphal, it's actually true, in the very early days of iPhones, and when everyone was wired up, no wireless, my older brother, who's had a history of sometimes taking people on, let's put it that way, was so incensed by somebody playing their music loudly through their headphones, you know when you could hear what they were doing, that he got out his little Swiss army knife and just cut the wire. And he told us this, and I said, Ben, you could have been killed. What are you thinking? Because you can't take these people on, because they're often in groups. Yes. And as a kind of, they think I'm a boomer, I'm actually Gen X, as a boomer mum, going up to a group of lads who are all playing music or looking at some video.
Speaker 1But also, if you're English, which does exist, if you are English, there's a tension between I can't stand hearing your music, but also, I don't want to raise my voice. No. It's a battle of the manners, isn't it?
Speaker 2Sometimes there's just passive-aggressive staring going on.
Speaker 1We do a lot of that.
Speaker 2It's like the sudden cock of the head.
Speaker 1But to be fair. Anyway. To be fair to the government, this is about addressing these little nuisances that add to the cost of living. So they go hand in glove with things like capping bus fares at two pounds. And we all suspect this is a build-up to a general election, right? Yes. So you haven't got any money to spend, so you do little things like this. So you create a buzz among the population that Andy gets it and wants to fix my problems. The issue is there is an increasingly unavoidable, enormous gulf between the ambitions of the government I want positivity, I want to bring people back together, I want to end poverty, I want to grow the economy and what the government's actually doing.
Speaker 2Well, he keeps on diagnosing the problems rather
Speaker 1than providing the solutions. And that's not a bad thing for someone to do. But as we tiptoe towards a budget next week, which we all suspect we're going to discuss defence later on, but we all suspect there isn't going to be anything in it. The vibe is it is going to be a. Steady as she goes budget. And then you hear that nearly one million young people are not in education, employment or training. Yes. And you're thinking, so what is your solution to that enormous problem? Well, Alan Milburn, former Labour minister, has said that the answer is to put people into training to get them off welfare and into work. OK, maybe that's going to cost a lot of money. But my point is, we all know there's this massive problem. We all know. We all know that the state is running out of money. We all know that we spend too much on welfare. So whatever reform we do, it's got to involve us, please, spending less in the long run, not more. And what does the prime minister do in the midst of this? He goes on Ladbible and answers questions about Oasis and VAR. Now, let's just quickly run through some of those questions and see what we think and what our audience thinks. Question one. And we can't simulate the movement. We're moving the pint back and forth. But question one. Gen Z have it harder than boomers.
Speaker 2Well, possibly when it comes to getting on housing ladders and all that, because boomers were able to buy properties in South London for a thousand pounds. But then comparatively, they didn't earn very much money.
Speaker 1What was the mortgage ratio to income that you had to have in the 1970s? It was about four to one. Yes. So it was very hard.
Speaker 2I mean. So let's not even get on to kind of pre- and post-war abject poverty. The pint of a price is criminal. Well, yeah, I suppose we can all agree with that.
Speaker 1It always has been. It's caused by the government.
Speaker 2I mean, it's harder for people, young people, to get a job than ever before. Well, yes, certainly now, prime minister, because we've just learned that there are 20,000 fewer vacancies in this quarter than in last quarter. So we have got the situation. We discussed it in the French riots.
Speaker 1That gets to the heart of this, though, doesn't it? Because what he wants to be is a listening prime minister. As you've said, you're spot on. He's very good at diagnosing and discussing problems. How are you feeling, Doris? How are your bunions? But what he will not address is the things, the decisions taken by this government in the last two years that have made that problem so much worse. Yes. It is becoming more and more expensive to employ young people. And sometimes the things that governments do to make life better for people who are already in their job, like raising the minimum wage or extra safeguards so you can't be sacked and things like that, they're great for them. But they actually lock people out of the jobs market. Because when you're young, an employer is looking to take a risk on you. Yeah. You do not have experience and training behind you. So you are worth less on the market. I'm sorry. Horrible thing to say. Shoot me up against a brick wall. But you are worth less to an employer. Yes. So you have to lower the value, the cost of your labor to make it worth the employer taking a punt on you. Yes. But if you get a socialist government that comes in and says, no, you must pay them exactly the same amount as someone who's been in the job. for 30 or 40 years. and you must make it impossible for them to sack them once you've hired them. The employer's just going to go, well, I won't hire.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a labour trio, a triangle of disaster for young employees. And that is putting up national insurance for employers, even though they said they weren't putting up national insurance at all, according to the manifesto. OK, that was breached. Second of all, as you say, it's the Employment Rights Bill, which entrenches rights for workers, which means that they remain unsackable. What if they're rubbish because they've only just started in the workplace and all the rest of it? And as you say, it was the well-meaning but disastrous minimum wage hike. Why would you take on somebody to wash glasses at a pub aged 16 on minimum wage where you could get somebody with 10 more years' experience who can also manage the pub and do a load of other jobs? So the whole thing has been a disaster. But again, you see him sort of sitting down answering questions. Don't the youth of today see through this stuff, by the way? I mean, this is the other thing. We had that whole string of headlines last week about 3,000 areas where. More than half of the population are on benefits. The idea that younger people claiming benefits for mental health problems has shot up. At what point does Gen Z actually hold the sitting government responsible for that? I'm not sure they're buying Brexit and Maggie Thatcher being to blame, considering that most of them certainly don't remember the latter and have probably well forgotten the former because of everything that happened during the pandemic. I mean, they might blame Covid and the last government's inability to properly deal with it. But again, people were furloughed. Exams were cancelled and all the rest of it. I just, you know, another one of the questions.
Speaker 1It is increasingly unsafe to be a girl in the UK.
Speaker 2God. Well, it was probably quite unsafe to be a girl back in the dark ages where people were throwing up at you out on the street.
Speaker 1How far back are we comparing? Your teeth are coming out.
Speaker 2I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1Are we going back to 10 to 60?
Speaker 2This is my all-time favourite. Men should talk more about their feelings.
Speaker 1No. Burnham agreed. Of course, Burnham agreed with that. I have to say, if you watch it, his answers are more nuanced than you might think. And he's quite savvy. You know, he's capable of saying, you know, things weren't all brilliant back in the day or sometimes we can over speak and all this sort of thing. But on the question, men need to talk about more, I can say as a man, no, I wish they would speak less. I'm sick of hearing about it.
Speaker 2Well, I wish everyone would speak less about their bloody feelings. Get on and just do things. It's like that brilliant Joanna Lumley's sentence to our colleague, Mick Brown, that went viral saying, oh, no, I don't want to self-reflect. I'm as shallow as a puddle. Thank you, Lummers, you absolute legend. Nobody's interested in me. Before you get older, you
Speaker 1do figure this out. I know you do. The penny does drop.
Speaker 2No one cares. No one cares. Kids, no one cares. You're on your own. You're on your own. To be fair, the government will be happy that the unemployment rate has fallen slightly to 4.7%, but we've still got this massive problem with youth unemployment. We've still got this problem, by the way, of too many young people who are able to work but aren't working being stuck on benefits and the cyclical nature of that. Can you actually ever get them off it? So, I just, I don't know, is there a sense that he is fiddling while Britain burns here with doing these strangers? If it's not Ladbible, it's going on Reddit. I mean, come in here, we'll do a great big Sunday showdown with him.
Speaker 1There is an acknowledgement that communications was a big problem with Keir Starmer and to some extent, that is cope, as the young say. By the way, Andy Burnham is clearly on a roll. He's a bit of a pick me. No, that one I don't know.
Speaker 2Pick me is kind of like, I don't even know really how to define it. I don't know how to define it.
Speaker 1believe if they did it people would respond to and say all right tell me what you want to do i'll give you a chance to do it because you at least this morning have run a razor blade over your chin and put a tie on neither of
Speaker 2which i did me neither camilla i was in the house of commons on monday
Speaker 1when west streeting took defense questions yes and they mentioned you they did should
Speaker 2we listen to it and
Speaker 3mr speaker on the 26th of july he appeared on the camilla tommy show on gb news and was asked the following question if the chancellor of the exchequer doesn't stump up enough defense spending will he resign absolutely replied the secretary of state is that still the case absolutely so that was the shadow defense secretary
Speaker 2james cartlidge pointing out that on a previous episode of my show i had said to west streeting if you don't reach three percent of gdp on defense spending by 2030 which was the original goal that john healy resigned over will you in turn resign and now they're getting the knickers into a twist because andy burnham he either misled or misspoke in the house of commons at a previous pmqs where he seemed to suggest that the goal was three percent by 2035 and then critics said no it's not three percent by 2035 that healy resigned over it's 3.5 percent by 2035 it's three percent by 2030 yes and now both streeting and burnham seem to be obfuscating somewhat all eyes are on the budget on october the 28th will it be busted by a defense spending pledge gone awry by a chancellor that resigned over defense spending that's the question
Speaker 1tim john healy and west streeting do not want to have to resign no because they've not hit the three percent target but they look like hypocrites if they don't in order to evade that outcome it looks like what they're doing is they're pushing the timetable back for the extra spend so that they will hit it sometime in the future and that way they don't have to resign in the present but west streeting has also said that the ministry of defense needs to clamp down on overspend yes so we're going to spend more but we're also going to demand efficiencies at the same time which is not unreasonable because departments do do that and defense can be incredibly costly you know you get generals who say you need the latest equipment and it turns out you don't but the question is are those efficiencies going to come from front line spending and i
Speaker 2think the other question to ask is they're boasting of spending 2.7 percent on defense which is more than the tory spent 2.5 percent so they're saying we are spending record amounts on defense but in the background we are reporting different things happening like for instance training programs being scaled back two billion pounds worth of cuts here we've also heard about the cadets and other reserve forces being scrapped so let's speak to hamish put into
Speaker 1a national service they're being amalgamated into one giant service but
Speaker 2whatever it all seems to be a slow kind of creep of kind of denigration and also the goal posts on this defense spending i'm afraid they keep on slipping one minute it's a pleasure and a promise the next it's a pathway it's an ambition it's this it's that hamish de bretton gordon is a former army army colonel and one of our columnists and you're writing a piece about this today hamish what's the truth of this matter where are we at and what's being cut well um what
Speaker 4we think or certainly what's reporting the telegraph today is the boxer which is a eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicle uh is having two million pounds cut from its budget now as far as i'm aware boxer is on budget and on time so saying that it's over that there's no excuse there and i think what what is really frustrating and galling about this this strikes me as a decision made by people who know absolutely nothing about how an army fights and how it operates and we're learning so much from ukraine at the moment and we we're changing and adapting but on the one hand i think people like healy and and streeting who have a peripheral understanding of the military now think well we'll just have loads of drones and we'll win well that that is not not the case and on the face of it we're still getting the majority of the boxers which will be fighting at the front and the artillery pieces that are on these vehicles but what they're cutting is the ability to repair and recover them which is just unbelievable uh madness because these things if if you can't repair and recover them the the sharp tip of the armored spear as it will will very quickly be blunted and the final bit on this i sort of i've talked about the drones but what we're also learning from ukraine the only way to take and hold ground is with soldiers and armored vehicles of course heavily supported by drones but what we're sort of doing here is losing that or certainly losing that ability to take and hold ground and to take and hold ground is losing that ability to do it over time so it seems like on the face of it that's fine just cut that we've still got the tanks we we still got the thing at the front but actually everybody knows it's the logistics that are really the important thing and it just seems this is a decision made by people who just don't understand what fighting and i'm fighting today this is a this is stuff we're learning from ukraine this is not legacy this is not fighting yesterday's war this is the ability to fight the future war and if healy and streeting don't understand it by god i bet the generals sitting in the kremlin are sort of licking their lips at this
Speaker 1hamish as i was watching the secretary of state for defense speak uh i noticed that partly because the department is so revered because its job is so important it's possible for him to hide behind certain conventions so when mark francoise for the tories asked about a lack of submarine patrols to defend against the russians west treating was able to say i don't comment on operational matters when andrew rosendell pointed out that the navy has been uh cut that the number of frigates has been halved since 2020 so how could we physically defend the falklands uh west treating was able to say i think it's irresponsible for people in this house to comment upon whether or not the falklands are undefensible in other words you can very easily retreat either into patriotism let's not talk about that because you're talking the country down or or as i say this this sense of you we cannot discuss what's actually going on operationally but is but what actually is the state of the armed forces when it comes to something like the falklands do we actually have the ability to project force in the way that we used to well i think
Speaker 4first of all you know i get the point of not talking about operational matters um but but that that is things that are happening absolutely now but talking about things like boxer and whether submarines are available to patrol that absolutely needs to be put forward but your question is you know what is our ability to project power i you know i i am a massive fan of the mod i've been involved in i was a soldier for a long time my son's a soldier you know we're all heavily invested in it i i still think you know everything that's been said and written we still have the capability to project power and to do stuff but for a really short time and the boxer decision yesterday sort of personifies that you know it's okay we can do something for a couple of weeks but we can't endure you know if we could stop the russians in a couple of weeks then fine we've got enough if we could defend the falklands or retake them in a couple of weeks then that's fine and if the argentinians aren't prepared but unfortunately the enemy has a vote in all of this and uh we know that wars aren't short putin thought he'd take ukraine in three days you know nearly five years later and it's that endurance that um that really worries us so i think we've got a fantastic first 15 first 11 as it were unfortunately the second and third elevens you know are just not there we everything's been hollowed out and i know you know i'm a huge fan of the military and that you know the young boys and girls are absolutely you know the best we can get but unless we invest in them you know that the i don't think morale's flaky but i know that the arm this box the decision i know you speaking to chums in the army they are really hacked off by it and it's that you know sapping a brawl and everything else and you know when when streeting and others talk about yeah social security must come first rather than national security you know you just really wonder where how these people think and work things out because of course it is national security that allows everything else to happen and at the moment we are you know we we are completely underfunding it uh to a degree but a very long answer your question the tip of the spear is great but it's not very big um i
Speaker 2wonder whether you agree with this hamish and whether you think top brass agree with this comment we've had loads of comments to this story from telegraph readers alan roberts writes healy is truly despicable with no moral backbone he resigned from the defense secretary post in protest at the grossly inadequate defense spending and astonishingly he now presents presides over continued growth inadequacy as Chancellor. It's obvious he cooked up a careerist deal with Burnham before Burnham became PM. And this says something extremely wrong and disturbing about them both. Our country is being ravaged by an invasion and left open to the likes of Putin and Xi to finish the job. What in God's name are we to do? It's getting extremely dangerous for us all. Now, I appreciate this slight tone of hysteria, but that is quite representative of what quite a few people in the UK think, both about the state of our defences and indeed the state of our defence secretary and chancellor right now.
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, I agree the tone. And I was a big fan of John Healey when he was defence secretary. I think he he did a good job. He and I think people across the three services respected him. And and when he resigned because Starmer was not going to give that three percent of defence, I think we all thought. You know, good on him. He can really do some damage on the back benches and get defence back on the agenda. But, you know, as the inference of that comment, when he got the top job, he then sort of reneged on it. And, you know, I sold it. Well, I think everybody integrity is is the byword to what everybody should live by. And Healey to me is, you know, he's showing he lacks integrity, which, you know, is a. Shocking position for somebody in such a important job. And it goes back in the piece that I've written. The whole thing just smacks of people who don't know about not fully on top of their brief. They don't really understand these things. I'm not saying that, you know, we should have ex-military people, you know, in as defence secretaries and ministers. But it does help to have a few people there with a bit of experience because the top brass, you know, they can advise and all the rest of it. And influence, but they can't make decisions at the end. They are, you know, they are just servants of the nation. So I yeah, it really does concern me that this is a really damaging thing by people who appear to lack integrity when I thought that they were absolutely on the ball in his previous job.
Speaker 2We could be surprised next week. They could suddenly pull 3% of GDP out of the bag in the budget. I think it's highly unlikely. What do you think?
Speaker 1I think it's very unlikely, especially given they're not willing to cut welfare to finance it. In fact, they're talking instead now about a large upfront payment to support training. So if anything, they're going to be spending more money, not less. Hamish, I would like to ask as a final question, given everything that's going on with regards to the military, yesterday was also debating the Troubles Bill, which many veterans fear leaves them exposed to litigation for people who served in Northern Ireland. You've also got questions of approach. You've got questions of appropriate funding, an image that went viral of an officer saying publicly that politicians have got to be frank about the cost of defence, which many people responded to by saying it's not just a question of how much we spend, but do we actually know what we're fighting for? Do you feel that soldiers think civilians have their back? What is the morale like in the armed forces?
Speaker 4Yeah, I think that that is a really good question. I think morale at the shock face. I think morale at the front line is pretty good because, as I said to begin with, I still think pound for pound. We train, we recruit, you know, the best young men and women and are well trained. But when you talk about the Troubles Bill, when you talk about, you know, SAS being handed and hounded in Afghanistan, you know, it's it's a very different world. And, you know, for somebody who's had their hair parted a few times by a bullet in their arm in Afghanistan, you know, like. It's a very different life there than sat in Whitehall or Westminster making decisions about whether to prosecute people and all the rest of it. And, you know, it is, you know, fighting is is not a peacetime activity and therefore, you know, making peacetime decisions, legal decisions and all the rest of it. They must be put in context. And whatever people think, we need the SAS. We need our military people, you know, doing dangerous things to protect us. And nobody is above the law. But I think we just want fairness and the Troubles Bill. You know, when you look at the IRA terrorists were given amnesties, you know, that that's pushed aside. But we've still got all these veterans being handed many with no or virtually no evidence at all. And ultimately, it is a really dangerous and difficult game. So morale, I think, is good. But to be able to maintain this capability to provide a deterrence. And maintain the ability to get our best young people into the frontline to protect us, you know, we the nation, I'm sure, is behind it. But politicians who, you know, you'll know better than I, they have such a short term view on life and make short term decisions that really impact the long term. And that when it comes to defense and when it comes to, you know, making sure that the soldiers know that the politicians have got their back is is really, really challenging. So, you know, I'm still confident in the men and women in our military. But by God, it's more difficult now than it used to be.
Speaker 2Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, thank you very much for joining us on The Daily Tea.
Speaker 4Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2I was just sitting there listening to Hamish and thinking to myself, Tim, how would Wes Streeting feel if his perfectly coiffed, real creamed hair was parted by a sniper's bullet somewhere in the Middle East?
Speaker 1I think the only person who has parted Wes Streeting's hair are Messrs. Tony and Guy.
Speaker 2I think that's probably. Don't tell them your name, Mike. Right. We'll be back tomorrow, 5 p.m.
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