Early last year I called out what at the time I thought would turn out to be the beginning of the end of the current Labour government, in large part because I thought that cutting departmental spending to bolster the defence budget would be toxic to the Labour grass-roots. It looks like they are pressing ahead with it.
Under outgoing Starmer’s current defence plan capital budgets especially within transort and energy are being gutted so that defence gets £15bn over four years. The capital expenditure can has already been kicked down the road for 16 years so this is serious scratching around for cash.
The kicker is Burnham has as one of his first actions stated that the pensions triple-lock will be maintained, something that the ONS estimates will cost an extra £12bn per year. Every year. So much for hard choices.