Rory Stewart

fairy stories that maybe this is going to be great for our industrial base.

What the Treasury would have been saying, and I've got some sympathy with them, is, hey, wait a sec, look at the kit that you're talking about buying.

A lot of this you're buying from the US.

A lot of this is just British taxpayers' money being shipped over to the United States to buy exquisite American kit and employ American factory workers.

Yeah, there's been some very interesting modeling.

I think the OECD and the World Bank and others have done it by economists.

just showing that a pound invested in defense historically simply doesn't return that much compared to a pound invested in infrastructure or education.

If what you're primarily trying to do is get economic growth, yes, you do defense by all means.

If you think you're going to be attacked, it's vital for your national security.

But don't kid yourself that that's an easy route to a growing economy.

Anyway, all that aside, I guess Healy

And again, if people haven't listened to the interview on leading, we're going to, I hope, post it again and give people a chance to listen to our conversation with Healy.

I mean, he's a really unusual person.

And as you say, he's not central casting for modern politics at all, right?

We're going into an election where, you know, Wes Streeting is about to run for the leadership.

He's barely been in since 2015.

I mean, Keir Starmer's only been in parliament for just over 10 years.

And previous prime ministers, you know, Rishi Sunak also only came in in 2015.

Even Liz Truss, when he came in in 2010, was me.

John Healy is a very different world, a world in which somebody can be in Parliament for 30 years, have all reached back to Tony Blair, right?