Speaker 1100 days of pork scratchings and TikTok. But what has the Prime Minister actually accomplished on this critical anniversary? More devolution in the National Social Care Service or just a series of undelivered promises for the future?
Speaker 2And just 24 hours until the budget. The former Defence Secretary, Sir Ben Wallace, has accused the government of fake funding by inflating its spending on intelligence.
Speaker 1He's been a number of different, slightly contrasting things in just three months. Because he's been someone trying to win Makerfield, Brexit constituency, to someone in charge of a Labour majority now seeking closer alignment with Europe. And so much of what he's done has been, well, now I'm in number 10, what am I going to do? Hello, Jacob. Good to see you again. It's good of you to have me back. I need to mention this. I didn't say it yesterday, where Camilla is. Because I don't want speculation. I don't want Dan Wooden saying, and where is Camilla Tomlin?
Speaker 2Who's Dan Wooden?
Speaker 1You don't know who Dan Wooden is?
Speaker 2I think he used to be on GB News. He used to.
Speaker 1He's a Kiwi here. And he'll be saying, she's stormed off. My sources tell me that Camilla stormed off. And he'll be discussing that with his special guest stars, Christopher Biggins and Jack the Ripper, later on. She has not flounced off. She is on holiday and will be back in one week's time. But thank you for filling her shoes.
Speaker 2I couldn't possibly fill her shoes. First of all, the heels are rather high, the nine would be. And also, Camilla is unbelievably brilliant. And I am, you know, the second tier. I'm the sort of night watchman who comes in when either you or Camilla are away.
Speaker 1Not true, not true. We should mention another national treasure, Harry Kane, who has won the men's Ballon d'Or, which is. Which is a gold ball. Gold ball, which would be what in Latin?
Speaker 2Well, we looked it up, didn't we? Yeah, we're not going to pretend that we knew. I got you a GPT to do. I got you a GPT to do it for me. And it is Pilar Aurea.
Speaker 1Very good, very good.
Speaker 2So he's won the Pilar Aurea.
Speaker 1Well done, that man. First Englishman in 25 years.
Speaker 2So we're all very proud of him. Well, I'm not sure Suella thinks he's an Englishman, but other than that.
Speaker 1Very good. From the readers, Reno Giordano says, Well deserved. He has a quality which is lacking in many stars today, humility. I agree with that. I wonder what he drinks, because we also want to mention a fascinating survey showing that Gen Z is turning away from tea. As Matcha rises in popularity. Almost half of young Britons, 47%, think that traditional tea is old-fashioned. And they're turning by 38% as an alternative to Matcha. Have you ever drunk it?
Speaker 2No one heard of it. My 10-year-old drinks tea and I drink coffee. I can never remember how old you've got to be to be Gen Z as we're English.
Speaker 1I don't know. I don't know. Actually, forgive me. It is Z, isn't it? Well, I hope so, yes. One that says Z. But Matcha is disgusting. It only tastes good if it is served by a geisha. And as is so true of many herbal teas, they have to be served, but it has to be loose tea for a start. And it has to be sort of boiled at a precise temperature and all this sort of thing. And so many people, I think, are doing herbal alternatives wrong. Like green tea is pure poison.
Speaker 2Oh, green tea is the most loathsome thing.
Speaker 1But it can be lovely so long as it has been properly boiled and properly left to stew in a pot.
Speaker 2Well, in my youth, when I had a proper job, I was an investment manager and I used to go on visits to Asian countries and they would very kindly bring in a cup of green tea at the beginning of a meeting, which I would equally politely drink. It seemed to have this sort of fungus in the bottom of it. I was the most loathsome drink. I was gasping for a cup of instant alter rica to keep me going through the meetings.
Speaker 1Well, for me, it'll always be PG Tips. We're going to talk about the budget tomorrow at 12.20. We're joined by a financial journalist and we're going to go through it live and discuss, what's being announced, et cetera. So everyone, please tune in tomorrow. That'll be great fun. But today marks the 100 days, like FDR, of Andy Burnham. What is your, when you hear that, what is your instinctual summary?
Speaker 2Well, if you put it in cricketing terms, 100 is usually a decent innings. But does it deserve a standing ovation at Lords? And I think it doesn't meet the standard for a standing ovation. At Lords, he's done well, but he hasn't done extremely well. He's done very well for the Labour Party. He's got them up by 10 points, I would have thought, in the opinion polls, from heading towards under 20 to nearly 30. So he may have got even more than that.
Speaker 1Yeah, in one poll at 32%. And his own personal ratings are above water. He is positively liked, which in the modern era is difficult for a politician to do.
Speaker 2He deserves credit for that, but he hasn't actually done anything. The thing about FDR's 100 days, was that it was the most enormous legislative program. Yes. Or if you think about Donald Trump's first days in office, first 100 hours of Trump, he did hundreds of executive orders. He changed the law of the country. I'm not sure Andrew Burnham has changed a single law in this country.
Speaker 1Prime Ministers can't really do that. And I think the American, one example of Americanization of politics is the concept of the 100 days. It's perhaps not very useful in a system which is.
Speaker 2Well, you can. in which the executive is in.
Speaker 1Is in parliament.
Speaker 2But the executive can bring forward statutory instruments which can change the law. Right. And they can be brought forward with immediate effect, as we did the whole time during COVID. Right. Now, you may think that's not a great process and made laid statutory instruments raised.
Speaker 1You couldn't say leave the ECHR.
Speaker 2You could give notice of leaving ECHR because that's.
Speaker 1But you need to get that bill to the parliament, right? That's your prerogative.
Speaker 2You could give notice and then you could. How long did it take to get rid of a king emperor? I don't know.
Speaker 1I don't know.
Speaker 2How long did it take? Okay. Under 24 hours. Right. Okay. With an act of parliament
Speaker 1through both houses, it took, I think, 45 minutes in the House of Commons. I'm not going to waste time asking, so why didn't you do any of that when you were in power? That's a given. If it's this easy.
Speaker 2Why didn't we do it in power when we were in power? Because I'm afraid most people don't know how the constitution works. Right. And they don't. When emergency things happened, we did get the COVID bill through with great rapidity. But the normal system is unbelievably slow. Yes. Just the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain, "You've waked me too soon. I'm a slumber again," as the door on its hinges say, "He on his bed, turned his hide on his shoulders and his heavy head." That is how government works in this country. Right. But if you've got a prime minister who really wants to get a grip, it's perfectly possible to do, but that's not what the civil service is saying. They're saying you've got to have a consultation. For primary legislation, you never need a consultation because you just say, irrespective of the act that says we needed a consultation. We're not having one. And then that's the law.
Speaker 1Yes. Well, he's putting many things out of consultation, his
Speaker 2government through consultation. But this is the really interesting thing, that if you look at Andy Burnham, he has been many different things over his political career. There's been a lot of commentary on his 2016 speech on- Critical free movement. Yes. Critical free movement. Yes. And when you're prime minister, you don't necessarily need to be a man of high ideology, but you need to know what. What you're trying to do, and I'm not sure yet he knows what he is trying to do. Is he still trying to please everybody, or does he have a direction in which he wants to go? If you think that Donald Trump was a registered Democrat in the 1980s, and he may still have many of those views, but as a president, he has been clearly a Republican, and everything he's done has been in line with his Republican values or the values of the Republican Party. You can change, you can evolve, but once you've evolved, once you're a leader, you need to set out very clearly what you're doing. And I thought yesterday, his 99th day, was a very difficult day for him, because he was all over the place on freedom of movement. Right. And what did so much damage to Starmer was this feeling that he never made his mind up about everything, anything. Yes. He always changed his mind, the U-turns were endless. You can U-turn if you've made a mistake. Yes. But U-turns have to be few and far between. You can't be spinning around in a circle in one day of media rounds.
Speaker 1So over the weekend, he had suggested that he was open to free movement, but also that he would like in his lifetime to rejoin the EU. So of course, we in the media then spent Monday asking, number 10, does this mean you're going to go to the European summit in November, and you're going to say we are going to open our borders to the EU as the first step towards saying, please, can we come back in? And they eventually had to come out and say, no, we're not discussing this sort of thing right now. But then
Speaker 2they sort of said, yes, today, Mr. Reynolds on the wireless this morning was saying, well, that will be part of a long-term discussion, but it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1But this is a thing, long-term discussion. So Burnham, when he was on Good Morning Britain with Richard Madeley and Susanna Reid, he had this very strange formula of rejoining the EU is something that I would like to see happen in my lifetime, but I will never get ahead of the public. So it's unlikely to happen. Which is it? You're saying it's something I would personally like to happen. I believe very strongly, but I'm not going to try and persuade you otherwise. I'm just going to have a conversation. It's all about starting conversations.
Speaker 2But this is a very weird way to govern because the way our government works is the government has a position, and that is the position of every member of the government, and every member of the government has to back that position or resign from the government. If the prime minister starts saying, I would like to do this, this then de facto becomes government policy. So to say, I would like to do this, but I don't think I can, just confuses everybody. It doesn't give you any serious answer as to where. policy is going. So he's had a good 100 days in terms of presentation. He's done very well. He's boosted his position in the polls. Nothing has really changed policy-wise. The budget is of such importance to see the direction he's going in. But that direction may be an early
Speaker 1general election. I mean, much of this is a function of how he got the job, right? That he didn't enter number 10 via the ballot box. He was brought in in what was effectively a coup. And he has, having got the job, at various stages, you said he's been different things at different times in his career. He's been a number of different, slightly contrasting things in just three months, because he's been someone trying to win Makerfield, Brexit constituency, to someone in charge of a Labour majority now seeking closer alignment with Europe. And so much of what he's done has been, well, now I'm in number 10. What am I going to do?
Speaker 2Well, I think he was slightly caught in a trap, really, because to win Makerfield, he had to put forward his Eurosceptic acceptance. But to unite the left, which is what he's trying to do, which is a very, very sensible strategy. If you look at the columns of left-wing voters and right-wing voters, they have hardly changed in recent years. What has changed is the split between the parties. If by tacking to the EU, he can unite the left, he can afford to lose seats like Makerfield. Unfortunately, Makerfield is his seat. He probably won't lose Makerfield, but he's giving up on all the Labour Red Bull seats, just accepting that he can't hold on to those in a general election, but that if he unites the left, he can win a functioning majority. And if you take the 170 majority as an aberration because of the way the cards fell, because of the unpopularity of the Tory party, actually, if by uniting the left, he could achieve a majority of 50, that's quite a political achievement. So I think that's part of the reason he's been moving back to the views that he had historically held. Now, one
Speaker 1might think he's not done a lot in 100 days, but he's taken some very small steps, which he says all add up to make the cost of living a bit easier for people, while also setting out a long-term direction. So consider some of the small short-term stuff he's done. National £2 bus fare cap, or the abolition of VAT on domestic electricity. He's also announced his campaign to end rough sleeping nationwide. But in the long run, I mean, there is some quite radical stuff here. A national care service, creation of a great British grid, right to buy exemption on new council housing, public control and marital oversight of water. He's got, he's proposing a new government, he's proposing a massive new training program for the young, along with a national electoral reform commission, which could see us wind up with PR. Okay, 100 days, he's on the hoof. He's had to react and move fast because he didn't know he'd be here probably about a year ago. But the long-term vision he's setting out is a classic Labour stuff.
Speaker 2Yes. And I have some sympathy for him in the difficulties you face as a new prime minister coming in in midterm. Bear in mind, I supported both Boris Johnson and Liz Trust to get the leadership of the Conservative Party. And you find in those circumstances that you spend a lot of energy campaigning to win the leadership. But there isn't time for policy formation. You've only got a few weeks of leadership campaign. You cannot design a plan for government in the few weeks of a leadership campaign. And that means that when you get in, you're still carrying on with a lot of your predecessors' work. That carries on. And you need time to get in. And you need time to get the policy prepared to be moved into legislation. So I do have a certain sympathy on that. Yes, he's done little things. I mean, the cutting of VAT on domestic electricity bills highlights the problem we have with energy prices. The problem with energy is that we've got a disastrous energy policy, which Labour is completely wedded to.
Speaker 1Jack Dorr has been approved.
Speaker 2Raised Bank hasn't. But Jack Dorr is a small step. What they're doing is they're going to do is approve shale gas, hydraulic fracturing. And then you can do a big effort to reduce gas prices. Because it's very difficult. There isn't an international market for gas. Lots of people say there is. It's just not true. There are a series of regional markets for gas. And it depends on interconnectors. And most of our interconnectors come in rather than going out. So it's quite hard for us to export our domestic gas. So that brings the price down pretty significantly. It also would affect global prices because the quantity would be so large. It's true there is a semi-global price for oil, depending on the quality and type of oil. So that would have a big effect if we went for that. That would fundamentally change the economy. The grid issue. What was it? The creation of Great British Grid. This is an enormously expensive consequence of green energy because you're switching the grid from a hub and spoke mechanism with very, very few hubs and millions of spokes to a spoke-to-spoke mechanism where you've got thousands and thousands of spokes going out to the millions of spokes. That is an enormously technologically complicated and expensive thing to be doing. And you will have to redesign the existing grid to pay for it. So that isn't making energy cheaper. That's going to make it more expensive. Because we're going to have to pay for that. Nobody's going to do it for free. But you're right. It is essentially a socialist program, isn't it? It's more state level. And it's this utter stupidity of people who have opposed council house sales. They assume that if you sell a council house, the house no longer exists. It's still lived in and normally by the same person who lived in it when it was a council house. The question has never been the sale of council houses. It's always been the supply of housing. And what's happening with the supply of housing? Is it going up or down? Probably down. Down. The last figures came out a few days ago. They've gone down because planning is so heavily regulated that nobody can afford it. Nobody can make any money building houses.
Speaker 1But this is the way with labor, isn't it? That it comes in, it sees a problem. It suggests a state fix. And the consequence of the state fix is usually the problem becomes worse. So we are braced tomorrow for the minimum wage going up. Though it's by a relatively small amount. I have sympathy for those who are in employment. It means that their work will pay more. But we're now seeing the long term costs of pricing younger workers out of the market. And so everything else that they're now doing, the training programs, is sort of playing catch up with the impact of socialist policy, which is to make employing young people too
Speaker 2expensive. Yes, that's absolutely right. All minimum wages, other things being equal, always reduce the demand for labor, just of their nature. Where minimum wages become a real problem is when the de facto minimum wage of welfare is lower than the de facto minimum wage of minimum wage. Because if you assume no rational person will work for less than they can get on welfare, until the minimum wage is comfortably more than welfare, it doesn't really hit. Because minimum wage is taxed and welfare isn't. Now, we had the figures from Ian Duncan Smith's institute recently that showed that certain types of PIP, you needed to earn 33,000 pounds on the minimum wage. You needed to work a 50-hour week to get. The minimum wage equivalent to being on a particular benefit. If you are now putting the minimum wage up, you get to a crux point where the minimum wage is so much higher than welfare that it is a genuine destroyer of jobs. And that's where things have been going
Speaker 1wrong. Yeah. And the problem is that if you push back against policies like that, it's very easy to paint you as a monster. So another example is homelessness. An entirely moral thing to wish to do to eliminate homelessness. We all hate it. We'd all like to see people given somewhere to live. But when he was on Good Morning Britain, Richard Madeley pointed out that with his homelessness plan in Manchester, initially the numbers of homeless fell, but then they went up again. And he said, "What went wrong, Prime Minister?" And Burnham said, "Well, the program was so successful that more people showed up." Well, that's socialism in a nutshell, isn't it? The problem with any kind of welfare program is that it can indeed in the short term solve the immediate problem of poverty, but it might also create new mechanisms that encourage poverty by encouraging people to apply for it. So they're looked after rather than looking after themselves. And this is what happened in San Francisco famously, where they adopted a policy of housing first. You come to us, we don't ask about what you're doing or the problems in your private life. We're just going to give you a home. And the consequence was San Francisco became a magnet for people moving into the region. So we all know, and I just feel terrible for saying this, I don't believe there is any government program that can completely abolish all homelessness to mean that no one is sleeping rough at Christmas, because it's so much more complicated than just whether or not there is available housing.
Speaker 2Well, there is an availability of hostels in London for people who want them. Westminster City Council can provide for people who want a hostel. And they do a very good job of providing for people who want a hostel. Hostels may not allow drugs, shouldn't allow drugs. They may have a dog and the hostel doesn't allow dogs. So there are issues that you come up against that, as you're absolutely right, make solving the problem extremely difficult. Because unless you're saying to people it is compulsory to get off the streets.
Speaker 1Which it isn't anymore.
Speaker 2They've changed the law there. Then there are some people who will say, well, the accommodation you're offering me is not what I want. Therefore, I will stay on the streets. And that's a difficult choice for people who are broadly liberal because you and I don't want to compel people. On the other hand, I didn't object to the Vagrancy Act. So I thought it was quite sensible to have a fallback power that said that if you are causing a nuisance on the streets, the police have some power under which to act.
Speaker 1And some people who are very unwell or very addicted to something actually require intervention.
Speaker 2In order to help. I think that's absolutely right. And I think we have a real problem with two things. One is the drugs law relating to cannabis and the mental illness created by that. We have so relaxed our drugs laws. I'm very much with Peter Hitchens on this. I think he writes very compellingly about the problems from cannabis and mental health. And the other is our mental health provision that allows people who 40 years ago would have been hospitalized to be on the streets. Neither to their benefit. Nor to the benefit of society. To the risk of society. Many of whom then end up in prison, which is probably not the right place for them anyway. And I think we need to revisit our approach to mental health.
Speaker 1Odds on the possibility of an election either this year or next year are improving partly because of, I suspect, things we've said on this program. It's 16 to 1 that there could be an election by the end of the year. That's not a bad bet. It's 7 to 4 that it could be an election in 2027. Now, having said in yesterday's episode that I think December the 10th is a possibility, I had a fascinating conversation with a left-wing journalist in the lobby who just kind of then changed my mind about it. And he said part of what's going on here is that psychologically conservatives think that raising a tax or introducing a regulation is so scandalous that you must have an election if you're going to do it. And his point was, why? All Burnham is doing is just slowly undoing. The straight jacket of Starmer. I mean, he put it really well. He said Starmer believed there was this god of politics that said you can't do certain things, whereas Burnham realizes that the god doesn't exist. And in fact, by starting these various conversations, he's giving the left permission to unwind that straight jacket and do the things it's always wanted to do. He's got the majority to do it. There is no need for him to give it up. And he believes he has the power of persuasion to bring people around to things that a few years ago were considered outrageous. And my friend concluded by saying, all you're seeing is a proper Labour prime minister governing like a Labour prime minister. Deal with it.
Speaker 2Yes. I don't think it's the Tories who are thinking changing tax policy requires an election. I think it is that there are very clear manifesto commitments. And Andy Burnham wants to be a trusted politician. And therefore, if he were to break the income tax promise, that would be very damaging to his. Reputation and all prime ministers have a certain amount of political capital, which they can spend one way or another to raise income tax would spend a lot of political capital, probably for less benefit that he would anticipate. Yes. Reentering the EU, if he wants to do that, the real problem is if he were to do that purely by legislation, which he could do one day, there will be a conservative government which would just repeal it. And therefore, the EU would have to ask itself and we'd leave straight away that. If we were taken back in without a referendum, an incoming conservative government or a foreign government would legislate on day one, would use the powers that I mentioned in relation to Edward VIII to pull out that day and say, thank you very much. We're not paying you any money. Go and boil your heads. It would be. And we're resigning from our contingent liabilities, too. Yes. And therefore, they would create enormous instability if they were to use the power in that way. Yes. And likewise, changing the voting system, I think, without a referendum would be very, very difficult to do. And he's only promising a national commission at the moment anyway.
Speaker 1He is. And that might not go anywhere. But I think the point stands that much of what we recoil from is just what Labour wants to do. And there is a substantial number of voters who want to do it as well.
Speaker 2But the reason for going for an election is not to change his promises because he can't go into an election without the commitment not to raise income tax. Because otherwise, a whole election will be on raising income tax. And he'll be accused of raising income tax whether he wants to or not. He has to keep that promise. So it's saying, if I go now, I bank another five years. Otherwise, politics looks very volatile at the moment. Labour was under 20% a few months ago. We could be back under 20% once we've gone through a winter where we might run out of electricity. If we get to people having to use the stores that they've bought. A government would be very unpopular in those circumstances. Energy prices are going to go up hugely in January and so on and so forth. Then suddenly, he thinks, well, let's bank a lead.
Speaker 1Okay. Well, I'll leave the final word to Christian Munger who says, He is a wolf in sheep's clothing, the mate of everyone while stabbing them in the back. The pal you give private information to who then goes and blabs with others. The man you trusted your wallet with then dips his hand into it. I don't think that person would be voting Labour on December the 10th.
Speaker 2I don't remember Little Red Riding Hood going in to see grandma and saying, "Grandma, what big eyelashes you have."
Speaker 1Very good, very good. Well, one major thing that will appear in tomorrow's budget is the question of defence. We'll be looking to see if the government's going to really raise defence spending or to hit its target. Ben Wallace, former Tory Secretary of State for Defence, says that the government is not being honest about its figures. And we speak to him next. So, Ben Wallace, former Secretary of State for Defence, you have laid a very important charge against this government that it isn't being straightforward when it comes to defence spending. Tell us what you're saying.
Speaker 3Well, it's a long-held trick of the UK Treasury to solve GDP targets with tucking under other departments' budgets and pretending that actually it's not going to happen. there's a material change in the funding of a certain objective. We all remember the 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid. Obviously, that has been mirrored with the initial 2014 target of 2% of GDP on defence. And I think when your listeners and readers understand, well, realise what that means, they think that means more money on our armed forces and maybe some of our intelligence and certainly our resilience. But what this government has done is they've doubled down on basically folding in everything that they can get their hands on to try and claim an increase of defence spending to meet the new target of 3% of 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. And I just think with this budget approaching, we can see that this government is prepared to do the treasury tricks, as we used to call them when we were in government. And it's actually one of the reasons Healy resigned. So it'd be interesting if he doubles down. But I could see it in the trails at the weekend. And I think it's time that we all know that transparency. And that's why I wrote to the UK Statistics Authority to asking them to investigate.
Speaker 1Let me give a concrete example of what you're talking about. And it's pretty mind blowing. In 2025, Rachel Reeves announced an extra £2.2 billion to be spent on defence. Of that, £2 billion went towards giving loans to other countries so they could buy military stuff from us. And £200 million was spent on doing up Barrow-in-Furness High Street.
Speaker 3Town centre improvements. It's not going to make the Kremlin quake.
Speaker 1Because when we hear those headline figures of 2.2, we imagine that's going on tanks, and more importantly, soldiers and their equipment and their homes. But actually, it's astonishing what is not going on, isn't it? And the typical trick is to wrap together intelligence spending and military spending, even though NATO says you must not count those things together, because they're actually two very different things.
Speaker 3You can count some intelligence if they are under military command, and have been subject to military training. So it will be a great surprise to MI5 to discover, that they are currently being categorised as defence spending by this government, and that potentially that means I look forward to seeing them on the assault calls any time soon. Because if the government's going to play by the rules, then these guys need to be able to be brought under it. And of course, they're not going to, because this government is determined to be as opaque as possible. And simply, they just simply refuse to answer many of the questions parliamentarians are putting to them about what is making up the GDP claims. The latest claim is 2.0, 7% of GDP. But in the government's own answer, it will tell you that we are currently spending the same levels, if not less, of GDP on our MOD budget. Our armed forces are getting the same, but since the government has arrived in office with national insurance extras, unfunded pay rises, delays to equipment programs for new reviews, which always adds money. Actually, they've got more and more pressures around the Chagos Island money, all unfunded. So in fact, the government, the MOD is being asked to find more with less money, while the government tries to parade around Europe saying, you know, the coalition of the willing, we're going to do more. And all of that leads to hollowing out when you don't match your appetite with the right funding.
Speaker 2And Ben, isn't the target in and of itself faintly ridiculous, because it encourages this type of abuse, that even before you've started with intelligence being rolled in, it includes pensions. So that's not actually providing any fighting force. And when I was trying to cut expenditure in the cabinet office, there was a committee in the cabinet office that duplicated a defense committee in Downing Street, actually triplicated, because there was one in the Ministry of Defense as well. And I suggested that we cut this and save low millions of pounds a year, not going to change the budget. And I got told I didn't need to worry my little head about this, because it counted towards our then 2% target. And therefore it was fine. And that as soon as you have these targets, you try and fiddle them and you spend the money badly. What you actually need to do is start from first principles and say, what type of defense do you need? And how are you going to fund it?
Speaker 3I totally agree. And I think the reason people have avoided that for so many years, that conversation is number 10 doesn't want to fund its rhetoric. You know, successive Downing Streets have gone on the world stage and proffered British leadership and British deployments, and they're not actually funded it properly. And they, of course, don't want to have their wings clipped by a proper grown-up conversation that we can't do everything, Prime Minister. At the same time, admirals and generals don't like sitting around tables with their peer group who benchmark each other on how many frigates and tanks and aircraft you have, rather than what outcomes you're going to deliver in lethality. And so it's better and easier to boast about the GDP figure than actually the readiness and the deployability of your armed forces. And too few Secretaries of State have been prepared to stand up to it. Like you, when I was in government, I remember the Guardian, dare I say it, said I sounded like an opposition politician when I would rally against the tucking under by the Treasury. Some of the bad habits started, I'm afraid, with our own government. In 2014, George Osborne decided to count VAT receipts as our defense spending. Now, if you can imagine that, that money goes straight back to the Treasury. And I remember on the record saying, I can't kill anybody with a VAT receipt. It's utterly pointless. And it totally plays into this game of don't you worry your pretty little head. And it also encourages governments to spin or press release to the parts of journalism that don't ask any questions in the same manner of depth. So I notice that this government does a lot of defense journalism, not to the defense journalists, not to specialists like Daniel Sheridan in the Daily Telegraph, for example, that will talk to the lobby because that's a day-to-day basis. And, you know, the likelihood that, you know, that the political editor of The Guardian will actually know the difference between a long-range missile and a short-range missile is very low. So they don't get interrogated. And I think we are gearing up, I think, for maybe an election, but certainly for a budget where the government's going to claim the highest spending since record began, etc. But you really need to look at what's being spent on our armed forces. That's what your readers want. That's what the public want. They don't want press releases.
Speaker 2When you pair it back, you take out MI5. I think we had MI6 and GCHQ in anyway, but if you were to take those out and then pensions, you're getting a defense expenditure figure that is, what, about 1.6%, that sort of thing?
Speaker 3I think 1.6, 1.7. We didn't do the whole of the intelligence budget. I think we did MI6's pensions and some of the joint cyber. But yes, and remember, we're also doing it when we're trying to renew our nuclear deterrence. The last time we delivered our new nuclear deterrence, the last time when we did Trident, we were spending 4% of GDP on defense. So it shows why, on a day-to-day basis, our men and women in our armed forces have record low morale, feel totally demoralized by what they see because they read in the papers like everyone else that apparently they're getting medical funding. But then they're being told they can't train, they can't deploy, they don't have any ammunition, their ships can't go to sea. And they're wondering, you know, they know the truth. And it's a total, it's dishonoring those men and women to glibly announce in your dispatch box basically fake funding for our armed forces.
Speaker 1This is very frustrating to listen to, Sir Ben, because I thought we had started to fix this about 10 years ago when Donald Trump came into office and said, "Right, everyone's got to start spending more within NATO." And politicians seem to kick their heels and seem to say they were going to do that. I can't understand this gulf between rhetoric and reality. Maybe I'm just a fool. Maybe defense is just something that people give lip service to, but don't really worry about because they don't really think Britain is under threat. Which is it, does our elite really take the security of the realm seriously?
Speaker 3I don't think that they have. For decades, prime ministers have always chirped, you know, the line that defense is the first duty of government and then promptly funded the NHS to the hilt and benefits. They haven't matched their rhetoric. And, you know, this is not a singular party issue. You know, there have been voices in the Labour Party, there have been voices in the Conservatives and the Lib Dems who have always talked about more on defense. The problem has been that the rest of the political party has not felt that's its priority. How many times did, Jacob, you and I hear no votes in defense? You often used to hear that from the pollsters. You hear that all the time. Well, I don't really care whether there are votes or not in defense. I care about whether we're defended properly. And, you know, I think, sadly, because of the Ukraine war, it's all come home to roost. All the boasts, all the numbers, all the parade ground rhetoric, we've been found out. I remember there was a discussion about sending the AS90s, that's the 155 long range artillery to Ukraine, and we had on paper 73 mobile fire, 73 sort of chassis that could have gone. At the time, the Treasury had said there would be a new for all. So if we'd sent them, we would have got funding to replace them, which they then subsequently reneged on. But it turned out, off the 73, we only had 19 working. I mean, that's we've been playing. Top trunks, as I used to call it, where we've been talking about the numbers, but not about the serviceability and the deployability. And that's because serviceability and deployability and operational capability is funded out of day to day running costs, the RDEL of the department. And guess which part of government's RDEL has grown exponentially for the last 30 years and sucked the life out of the rest of government? RDEL is benefits and RDEL is health service activity. So where do they go for that? They go for the MOD and every single, I think, turn of the hand or the MOD, the Treasury asked to cut more day to day running costs. It's why we saw HMS Cardiff not be able to put to sea because there was no money for maintenance. And if you look at the government's own dip, if you remember the defense investment program that was 18 months late in the first place, their table in their own document showing a real terms cut to the day to day running of defense for the next three years. I mean, astonishing. I think what's sad, Tim, is other members in Europe have actually stood up. Germany, Poland, the Baltics, Scandinavians have put their money where their mouth is. Denmark even canceled a public holiday to increase tax revenues to fund it. We have done press releases.
Speaker 2But John Healy was thought of as being on the side of the angels. That is to say, he was shadow defense secretary. And I think your. Your ministerial team thought quite highly of him as shadow defense secretary, a serious minded man who you could talk to about defense, who understood the issues, who didn't make cheap criticisms, but thought things through carefully. He then resigned as defense secretary over this very issue. Now he's in charge. Seems to me there is reasonable pressure on him to deliver because he understands the problem in a way that nobody pretends Rachel Reeves ever did.
Speaker 3Yes, I think the test. The chancellor is going to be are you labor first or defense first? You resign because you put defense before party. I know that one of the reasons. he resigned was because of treasury tricks as he called it because i think the treasury came to him with with a scheme that was probably similar to mine at one stage they wanted me to claim that any spending the home office did on someone who came from a war zone was defense spending so an asylum seeker from i know libya would suddenly be viewed as defense spending um and i said no i said no to need all of them i think every single one i said no but it's his time to choose it and and when he gets up on his legs this week we will see and he may go for the other option which is next year we'll tell you next year but in the meantime let's not forget despite the words of 2.7 percent of gdp our armed forces are facing a real terms day-to-day cut of the day-to-day running of our armed forces for the next three years so
Speaker 1ben wallace thank you very much thank you very much thank you jacob jacob i witnessed an unseemly row on gb news which fascinated me between the presenter alex armstrong and the retired policeman peter blexley about whether or not young people are willing to serve their country in the military and armstrong suggested he wasn't and peter understandably got very angry about that and called him selfish and you've commented upon how it's important that we have a country which is inculcated in people they're willing to fight but one point that armstrong made that i was sympathetic towards was my government keeps saying that we need to fight but it won't spend the money to do it or when its ally goes to war with iran britain steps back and says that's not for us there is a mixed message that the labor government's sending out that it is the party of defense and security and you've got to stockpile some goods and the russians are after our cables and we need young people to sign up but on the other hand if you're not willing to put the money in i feel like i'm being i know you hate this word gaslit by the way that i ought to sign up for something which westminster itself won't actually invest in
Speaker 2this is how the british have behaved throughout the centuries that we have never put money into defense until we've actually needed to if you think of the size of the army that was available in 1914 if you think of the lateness of rearmament in the 1930s that we've always run down defense after wars and assume the cold war was in fact a war it simply was a cold war more than it was sensible everybody then is willing to fight when the bugle sounds that i have absolute confidence in the patriotism of the british people and of young british people when you say to them do you want to go off and fight of course they say no because there's no obvious thing to be fighting for at the moment and it just sounds very aggressive and they see all these wars that we have fought that have failed afghanistan iraq too that haven't covered the nation in in glory so why would they want to join up but it all changes if there is a real threat if something actually happens yeah it's the lines um mark francois quoted from kipling it's tommy this and tommy that and chuck him out the brute but it's savior of the country when the guns begin to shoot yes and that's right when the guns begin to shoot people's patriotism is revivified but something
Speaker 1that sir ben said there uh which i i picked up on and i don't think it's appreciated enough is the nature of the military has changed it's no longer about being able to deploy hundreds of thousands of young men with a rifle slung over their shoulder it's about what he said is lethality and actually we still have this fantasy of a people's army we we because we see everything through the prism of the first and the second world wars but the truth is is that a strong military nowadays really depends on the ability to blow a lot of things up with as little effort as possible and that's not really description or uh or or appealing to patriotism anymore it's about having a very well-funded professional army i
Speaker 2have a feeling the answer is yes and no that that is to say you've seen in ukraine enormous developments in technology with drones and even drones rescuing people from battlefield but you've still needed the infantry to hold the territory haven't you yes and so you've had both a war where large numbers of them are involved and technology has become key which has changed the nature of how the war is being fought and that's what we've got to prepare for and you're quite right we will soon i imagine have ships that do not need thousands of sailors on them that they will be all automated and ai and they'll be operated from a bunker at some naval place and the same true with planes that they will all become automated i think they pretty much are automated now actually that the pilot sits there but if the computer fails the planes can't fly there need so many small adjustments constantly being made to be the size that they are the shape that they are and so on that if the computer can't make those adjustments the pilot ejects and the plane crashes that he can't now take the stick and fly it in manual i think right um and so you're already at a stage of very significant technological sophistication but if you have to hold territory yeah you still need the troops to do it and you need the ships even if the ships don't need so many sailors so i it depends on the type of war that is is forged but i think your basic principle is right it's the most important thing is that you have to have a lot of training and you need to have a lot of equipment and the difficulties there for the mod is mod procurement is so long-winded that the equipment is now out of date before you've even completed the order yes that they're developing completely new drain
Speaker 1drains every fortnight yes and producing them within six weeks and having an incredibly fast cycle on and as
Speaker 2west treating has said it's gone from the
Speaker 1beginning of the war us
Speaker 2are fighting and we had an exercise the uk and estonia against the ukrainians last year and the ukrainians won by miles well
Speaker 1we will be back tomorrow 12 20 because we'll be talking through john healy's first budget and we'll be back with the next episode of the ukraine podcast so until then have a great day
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