A defence insider said it was “madness after all that wrangling to have left a £4.7bn black hole for someone else to fix”
I don't think that Starmer intended to have Burnham replacing him.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Just listened to a radio programme which claimed that the UK is the 6th largest spender on defence in the world already.
You can imagine a future where the UK's completely gone to shit internally: the infrastructure's broken, roads so potholed that you can't drive, mass homelessness, no medical treatment available, no fresh water, food shortages, power cuts, everything closed down or in the process of shutting but surrounded by an arsenal of cutting edge nukes, drones, battleships, submarines costing £billions.
Defending what?
The 1% lifestyle and tax havens
the infrastructure’s broken, roads so potholed that you can’t drive, mass homelessness, no medical treatment available, no fresh water, food shortages, power cuts, everything closed down or in the process of shutting but surrounded by an arsenal of cutting edge nukes, drones, battleships, submarines costing £billions.
Mini-Murica, Bloody Heck yeah!!!
What pettiness
Where the meme of "we should look after our own first", it should apply to our colossal military spending too, how about we get the shit out of our rivers before we send our jets to hover over Gaza and "defend" the bases being used to bomb kids‽
It's possible to do two things at once. Sorting out the dysfunctional water companies is one of Burnham's promises. And the increased defence spending is, sadly, a necessity, not just based on scaremongering. The US under its current government won't help (and might even help the aggressors) and the reported pattern of Russian-coordinated arson attacks, infrastructure sabotage and inter-communal provocations is identical to that seen in several other countries. And it's no coincidence that Tommy Robinson was in Moscow recently kissing the ring. You like the fascists? Then you're going to love life in a state subverted by Putin.
And I say this as someone who is no fan of Burnham or the military-industrial complex.
The EU spends 2x what Russia does, the UK alone spends ~1/2 (as does Ukraine), the only reason to increase our spending is to fuel the military-industrial complex or for "national pride" reasons.