Chris Mason

And the accusation that we heard from critics yesterday, including John Healy, that the pace of increase from next April to the end of the decade is fast.

far, far too slow and therefore raises the credibility, a question around the credibility of whether from 2030 to 2035, you could then get to 3.5% of national income being spent on what seems core defence in that five-year window, particularly because...

It is, I think, reasonable to be more sceptical about spending commitments that are made a long time ahead rather than ones that are much more imminent.

And then on that crucial question of trade-offs and choices, him making the point about international aid, as you mentioned, and then secondly, and again, this goes into sort of Westminster machinations a bit, but I think it's important, him saying, look, it is difficult...

to reopen conversations with cabinet colleagues about their own budgets after the point they've been signed off.

So when you have a spending review, it sets out those budgets and then cabinet ministers go along, go off to do their jobs, kind of knowing the kind of financial envelope that they're operating within.

That has been unpicked.

And he said to me, he'd got money out of every department, which is effectively going into the pot to be passed on to defence.

Did you manage to secure cuts from every member of your cabinet in their respective departments to help pay for defence?

Clearly, the wider question it raises

is if the critique is that process hasn't generated enough money, clearly that is the critique of some, maybe the process was never going to be good enough to do that.

And you're into a question then about, you know, do you have to, as some critics say he ought to, go much harder after getting welfare spending down?

Or do you have to think of some alternative mechanism of funding defence?

The Liberal Democrats have talked about a defence bond, for instance.

So...

Yeah, but within the scope of what he's decided to do, he said he was making these hard-edged choices that involve difficult trade-offs.

And actually, Chris, that then makes you realise the original problem with this whole process is that if you've done your spending review as a Prime Minister and a Chancellor and all the government ministers for what you're going to spend for the rest of this Parliament, and that's quite a cutthroat process that involves a lot of hard-edged choices, whatever a hard-edged choice actually is, classic Starmer phrase there,

Then you commission a massive review, which is really wide ranging and forward thinking and comes with a huge price tag.

Well then, but you've already set your envelope as it's known for what you're going to spend.

So it's like, maybe there's an argument that he should have seen this coming as soon as he commissioned the defense review, maybe.