Kiran Stacey

speaker

464 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 3d ago

Kiran Stacey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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Today in Focus · Is the UK spending enough on defence? – The Latest · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

Politicians will tell you, are we going to spend 3% on defence in the next parliament?

But they haven't yet said how.

It's not a huge change from what John Healey was negotiating.

What we know is that there is an extra £1.5 billion going into this defence investment plan above and beyond what Healey managed to secure.

Perhaps unfortunately, from Healey's point of view, a lot of that has actually been taken by pushing back planned repairs to housing for people serving in the armed forces.

That was something that Healy was really, really keen on as Defence Secretary.

And that money has essentially been raided to help pay for a bit of extra spending now on drones in particular.

So as always with these things, there are payoffs.

Yes, there is a bit more money in this plan, but it has come from somewhere.

Yes, I think the Prime Minister was hoping to go to that NATO summit with a few good headlines about defence spending so that he could meet Donald Trump and other NATO leaders and say, look at what we're doing.

We're meeting our pledges.

However, what he's ended up with is this really bruising government row that you mentioned, Lucy, and a lot of headlines based on comments from existing and previous military personnel saying this just isn't enough.

So to a certain extent, it's a little bit of an awkward position for Keir Starmer to go into that summit with.

Let's see if Donald Trump decides to pick up on that or if other leaders decide to pick up on that and really embarrass him on the world stage.

Yeah, there really has.

I mean, I have been tracking this now for several months.

And I have to say, the internal government rows that this particular plan has caused are some of the worst I have seen of the Keir Starmer government.

Essentially, what we had is a standoff between John Healey, the Defence Secretary, and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, to the extent that they didn't seem to be speaking.

towards the end of Healy's time in office.

And I was told yesterday that actually Healy had decided not to negotiate directly with the Treasury at all and do everything via Keir Starmer in Number 10.

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