Is the Prime Minister pleasing Trump or protecting Britain?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the eve of his trip to Washington, Keir Starmer told the commons that UK defence spending would rise to 2.5 percent within two years. It’s an increase in real money of £13.4 billion. £5 billion of which will come from cutting our foreign aid budget. Is he trying to protect Europe? Or to please Trump? And will it work?
Later, does Labour have the right response to the falling birth rate? Why are all the conversations about family and children coming from the hard right and the MAGA traditionalists? We talk to Josh Simons, Labour MP for Makerfield.
Tickets to The News Agents Live On Stage with HSBC UK are now on sale! You can get your tickets for Edinburgh here: https://articles.globalplayer.com/7giHoMavXLgdrd6gaC3GxWG7T8
Editor: Tom Hughes
Executive Producer: Louis Degenhardt
Producer: Natalie Indge
Digital Editor: Michaela Walters
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Rory Symon, Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
Digital Journalist: Michael Baggs
Don’t forget you can also subscribe to our other News Agents podcasts via the link below:
https://linktr.ee/thenewsagents
The News Agents USA now have merch! Click here to buy yours now: https://store.global.com/collections/the-news-agents
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.4 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:14.1 | Mr Speaker, as a young man, I vividly remember the Berlin Wall coming down. |
| 0:19.7 | It felt as if we were casting off the shackles of history, |
| 0:24.9 | a continent united by freedom and democracy. If you had told me then that in my lifetime, |
| 0:34.3 | we would see Russian tanks rolling into European cities again. I would not have believed |
| 0:40.7 | you. That was Kirstama in the Commons this lunchtime, announcing that defence spending will rise |
| 0:49.0 | to 2.5% within two years. He's also saying that it will go up to 3% by the end of the next Parliament. |
| 0:59.0 | These are massive increases in spending that are going to be largely paid for by a shrinking of the foreign aid budget. |
| 1:10.0 | But is this about what Britain needs for the next two years |
| 1:14.4 | or pleasing Donald Trump when he flies to see him tomorrow? Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:24.4 | The newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. |
| 1:36.7 | And there is an old saying in the Foreign Office that British foreign policy is find out what America thinks and do a little bit less. |
| 1:46.6 | That was made flesh today in the House of Commons where Kirstama announced that the defence budget was being boosted, what America wants to see, and that the aid budget was being cut. Look what Elon Musk has done to USAID. |
| 1:53.9 | You could almost think that aside from the wider theatrics of what it's happening, this was a policy |
| 2:00.7 | designed to fit in with that old maxim about just do a little bit less than America's doing itself. |
| 2:08.9 | Yeah, I wonder if that still works in 2025. |
| 2:12.3 | The details of what he announced are pretty much that we're going to see this raise from 2.3 to 2.5% by 2027. |
| 2:22.1 | That means in real term in actual money, 13.4 billion pounds a year more. This will come, as John said, |
| 2:30.7 | by reducing the aid budget. So aid now, foreign aid, which you'll remember, |
| 2:36.0 | used to have its own department, then got sort of swept into the foreign office. They used to be a |
| 2:40.4 | firm commitment of 0.7%. The Labour Party always said that they would try and get it back up to 0.7%. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Global, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Global and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.