STARMER LEAVES ARMED FORCES £14 BILLION SHORT IN PARTING GIFT AS PM

Half the money. That is what the Armed Forces are getting under Keir Starmer's Defence Investment Plan, fourteen billion against the twenty eight billion defence chiefs said was the floor to keep Britain safe. Two defence ministers walked out over this. John Healey gone, Al Carns gone, both refusing to put their names to a budget that leaves the country exposed. Only one billion of the plan is new money. The rest is creative accounting. The flagship five billion drone spend works out at less than two per cent of the MoD budget over four years. A defence source called it utter waffle. They were being polite. Starmer himself warned Russia could strike NATO by 2030, then handed the military a plan that gets nowhere near ready and rushed it out as his final act in office.

DEFENCE