Laura Kuenssberg

Everything that happens now is happening on the clock of the by-election.

So it's not just strange things happening.

It's strange things happening at the time they're happening.

So let's just turn to how newscasters are digesting all of this.

And A. Brooke in Christchurch says, High NC team, a minor but really irritating government tone deafness, read the constraints on defence spending, is today's announcement of 4.5 billion over the next five years on cycling and walking in cities.

Possibly small beer in the scheme of things, but surely of much lower priority than defence.

Thank you for your valuable work.

So this is about...

how to spend money which you don't really have and where the priorities are of any government or any new administration that might be formed.

And what you're going to cut, and I mean, Laura highlighted this on her show today, where Streeting has spoken about these choices and this investment in cycling and walking.

And Lisa Nandy hit back, well, you know, where Streeting as health secretary was encouraging public health interventions.

that would take the stress off the NHS.

What also is interesting in terms of what you do cut today is you pressed Al-Qans on what he would cut to pay for defence.

And he had this sort of snazzy line about we need to take... We need less handouts and more hand-ups, but didn't really have the detail.

And ultimately, the Conservatives, while you questioned James Cartlidge, the Defence Secretary, didn't have a...

a full list of things to cut that would allow more spending on things that the Conservatives think are important.

And it's one of those questions of our age.

Less than three days after John Healy's resignation, we're now in a situation where a cabinet minister has admitted, oh no, we are trying to look for more cash.

The current settlement that Keir Starmer said we couldn't go beyond is now being reopened.

And there seems to be an acceptance that what was completely correct on Thursday morning is now unsustainable.