Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Megan McElroyd, and I'm joined

today by Lucy Fisher, Whitehall editor at the Financial Times, and James Hill, our deputy

political editor. So Lord George Robertson is the author of the Strategic Defence Review, and Lucy,

he's made a pretty major intervention in the

FT. As you put it, he's run out of patience on military spending. Can you tell us a bit about

what's happened? Of course. So, Megan, Lord Robertson was asked by the government to review the threats

facing the UK and indeed the capabilities needed to try and modernise and frankly overhaul

what all parties sort of now agree are a hollowed out British military. He reported last June with

his blueprint of what the UK needed to do. And of course he has a lot lot of credibility, not only as a Labour, former defence

secretary, but as a former general secretary of NATO, the entire alliance. So a very trusted figure.

And essentially, since then, the government promised to come forward with a 10-year plan on how it was

going to fund defence, first in the autumn.

It's been repeatedly delayed. And now we're into sort of spring. We're still not seeing it.

And last week, John Healy even refused to rule out that this could run into the summer.

So as you point out, I think George Robertson, who has tried to work constructively behind the scenes with the government to overcome the impasse on how defence will be funded, he finally ran out of patience and decided to make this really hard-hitting attack, both in an interview with the Financial Times and in a speech in Salisbury on Tuesday,

in which, you know, he warned that the government is guilty of corrosive complacency towards defence, that the UK is under attack and in peril, in a stinging rebuke of Starrmer's military policy,

and in particular having a bit of a go at what he called vandalism by non-military experts in the

Treasury. James, do you think part of the bigger picture here is the government can't agree on how

to fund anything? It's clearly a pretty big problem for us, especially given that we've just

had the news that the UK has been hit with the biggest IMF downgrade. Well, that sort of sums

it up. Every time the government tries to plan budget properly,

one of a number of things happen, either, as you've just alluded to, their, events intervene

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