Is The UK Spending Enough on Defence?
Newscast
BBC
4.4 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 November 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, Laura’s been trying to get answers from Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, about when the UK Government will meet its target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence.
Laura and James are joined by Henry to discuss possible points of difference between the Treasury and the UK chief of defence Admiral Sir Tony Radakin - who told Laura he wants ‘resources’ to match ‘ambitions’. And, did Laura have the next British Ambassador to the US sitting on her panel?
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Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Laura Kuenssberg and James Cook. It was made by Miranda Slade with Anna Harris. The technical producer was Johnny Hall. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Well, news, news, news, news, the news never stops. |
| 0:07.8 | And this weekend is a very, very newsy weekend indeed. |
| 0:11.3 | Henry, James and I yesterday talked about Trump, what the campaign was like. |
| 0:16.6 | And it looks like today he's about to complete, as we talk at quarter to 11, |
| 0:20.6 | the clean sweep of all |
| 0:21.7 | the swing states. What's your hot take? Because everyone else in the world has given some hot |
| 0:25.0 | takes about Trump in the last couple of days. Well, I don't know how original this is by this |
| 0:29.3 | point, but I'm fascinated by the global wave of anti-incumbent sentiment in this year of elections. We keep hearing, 2024 is the year of |
| 0:39.3 | elections in so many parts of the world, obviously including the UK. And the US is completing the |
| 0:44.3 | set where basically everywhere, incumbents have been punished and punished badly. Obviously, |
| 0:50.8 | Kamala Harris wasn't the president, but she was essentially the incumbent candidate. |
| 0:54.8 | And what I've been thinking about is that seems new. There have been previous periods of |
| 1:01.4 | economic tumult where some incumbent parties, some incumbent leaders have been given the benefit |
| 1:08.2 | of the doubt. So why is it that this year they have so definitively not been given the benefit of the doubt. So why is it that this year they have so |
| 1:12.0 | definitively not been given the benefit of the doubt? Is it that so many of these countries have |
| 1:16.8 | experienced high inflation after decades in which voters have never experienced essentially inflation at |
| 1:22.9 | all? Is that what it is? Or is there something else? Is there something in our culture or in the fact that we're also much more atomized now or in social media or whatever? |
| 1:31.3 | Is there something there that means actually we are all so much less willing to give politicians the benefit of the doubt now? |
| 1:38.3 | Because if that's the case, and we're headed for a much more volatile period of politics in which one-term governments |
| 1:45.0 | across the world might become much more of the norm. I think that could completely change |
| 1:50.1 | the incentive structure for politicians, the kinds of policies they pursue. That, I think, |
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