Alastair Campbell

But look, in the end, I suspect that he, if Keir Starmer thought that

He's ended up believing the Treasury.

He's ended up believing that this is the only way that they can affordably do what John Healy is trying to do with regard to the defense investment plan.

But it's a very, very severe blow, this.

I mean, it's like...

you know, where Streeting resigns, well, he's the health secretary and he gets replaced and he's a very effective communicator and all that.

But I think when we are in this position, you know, that conference that you and I were at in Finland last week, you know, how often do we talk about Russia and the threat?

Keir Starmer made a speech recently where he talked about, you know, we're looking at a possibility by 2030 that Russia might launch an attack upon a NATO country.

So we do have to crank up.

And by the way, Roy, I yesterday was at an event,

with Mick Mulvaney, who was Donald Trump's chief of staff for a while in his first term.

And he was very interesting about this.

I mean, look, our politics are sort of way apart, but he did say something which really struck home.

He said, look, I get why you feel the way you do about Trump and Ukraine,

But you've got to understand, most of the people in America, they're sitting there thinking, hold on a minute, you Europeans, you're way richer than Russia.

The European economy is a lot bigger than Russia's.

Why do you keep looking to us?

And it's sort of, because Trump does it in the way that he does it, it brought it home to me that we...

We're not being serious enough about this threat and why the European response has to change.

And also, just to jump in on Russia, if you look at Russia, they did have a bit of economic sugar rush on the back of suddenly being back in a major war.