‘A boring, dull, whiny wet sock!’: Starmer blasted at PMQs over defence spending

0:02The Telegraph.

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0:43Camilla: Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenock at war at PMQs over defence spending. Former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Robertson says the Prime Minister is showing corrosive complacency while the British Army has shrunk to its smallest size in centuries. Is Labour's failure to increase defence spending a betrayal of our troops? While Labour faces a political earthquake as polling for The Telegraph reveals that it is set to lose control in Wales for the first time since devolution. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me Camilla Tomeny. And me Jacob Rees-Mogg.

1:26Camilla: Jacob, before we start, the Daily Tea Roadshow. You are now involved. This is very exciting. Well, it's kind of you to invite me a visit to Warwick. I haven't been to Warwick University for ages, but I went to speak there once before, I think in the midst of the Brexit campaign, that sort of time. Yes. It would be nice to go back there. Well, we like seeing you on campus because sometimes you get barracked by socialists. It's going to be the socialist students versus the country squire. That's how we're going to position this. Well, the thing hecklers always forget is that the person they're heckling has the floor.

1:57And so hecklers always or almost always help the speaker.

2:02Camilla: Yes. And you love a heckler. I love taking it on. Yeah, heckling's fun. So to remind everybody, Tim and I are going to be in London on Monday the 27th, where we're hopefully going to have a right ding-dong between right and left, the details of which are to be announced because they're being finalised, but it's very exciting. Then on the Tuesday we're going to be in Cardiff, which looks to be on the verge of wiping labour from the map. Then on the Wednesday, so that's the 29th, that's when you'll be in Warwick taking on the students, which will be great fun. And then in Worthing on the 30th by the seaside, we're going to have a right Royal Daily Tea because we're going to have on Phil Dampier, who is a royal reporter extraordinaire, used to be the royal editor of The Sun, broke many, many hugely influential stories during the War of the Whaleses, and Lady Colin Campbell, who you'll be familiar with, with her very controversial views on Harry and Meghan.

2:58Camilla: So we'll be discussing all of that by the seaside. I thought you might have gone to Brighton and done it from the Royal Pavilion and had a sort of seance with George IV, but not this time. It's a shame. Also, there are a lot of Greens in Brighton, and I'm not sure they agree with my analysis of Zach Polanski. So we'll see. So that's the Daily Tea Roadshow. You can get your tickets. Please do come along, metres in a flesh. Ask some questions. Get your tickets now at the link in the episode description. PMQs, Jacob, we're back. It's exciting, isn't it? The cut and thrust. No, the Prime Minister's absolutely hopeless.

3:32Boring, dull, whiny. Kemi is doing it very well. You are partisan in this. I'm viewing as an independent-minded observer. Right. But the Prime Minister's such a wet sock.

3:43Camilla: I know. Well, I loved hearing the dulcet tones of Mel Stride, who seems to have become the new sort of Geoffrey Cox of Parliament, shouting... Just answer the question. But the trouble is he didn't really answer the question, did he? And the Speaker had to pull him up for turning it into Leader of the Opposition's questions. And Lindsay's been criticised for not making the Prime Minister answer the question. He can't do that. That's not his job. But what he can do and has done many times before is tell the prime minister it's prime minister's questions, not leader of the opposition's questions.

4:16So the speaker was, as usual, playing an important role in today's events.

4:19Camilla: The thrust of what Kemi Badenock was saying was pretty straightforward. And let's be honest, it's been in the headlines all week. She wanted to put it to the Prime Minister that the intervention of Lord Robertson, who was once a Labour defence secretary, he was the architect of the latest Strategic Defence Review, basically turning around and saying this government, i.e. my government, the government I support as a Labourite, is not leaving Britain prepared for war. Lord Robertson, who authored the government's Strategic Defence Review, has said the Prime Minister has a corrosive complacency. when it comes to defence.

4:57Why did he say that? Mr Speaker, let me start by saying I respect Lord Robertson. And I thank him again. I thank him again for carrying out the strategic review. My responsibility is to keep the British people safe, and that is a duty I take seriously. That is why I don't agree with his comments. Last February, that was seven months after taking office, I took the decision to increase defence spending from 2.3 % to 2.6%, paid by a difficult decision on overseas aid. Last June at the NATO summit, I committed to raising core defence spending to 3.5%. Last November, Mr Speaker, the budget committed record funding to defence.

5:45I reaffirm those commitments now. The spending, the Strategic Defence Review, is a 10-year blueprint for national security. The Defence Investment Plan will put that into effect. It will be published as soon as possible. We need to get it right. Also, you put, to my mind, exactly the right emphasis on Lord Robertson. He is a loyal Labour figure. Loyal Labour figures of that come, particularly the Scottish ones, don't attack their own party. The Labour Party is generally more loyal than the Conservative Party. Very rarely do grandees come out and take a real pop at what it's doing. and Robertson did, and this is important in a number of ways.

6:27First of all, he knows what he's talking about. Few people know more about it. Very interestingly, I had Geoff Hoon on my GB News program last night, and he's another former Labour Defence Secretary, and he was almost entirely endorsing what Robertson was saying, so it's not just Robertson. And I just wonder whether people of that degree of loyalty are doing it because John Healy, the Defence Secretary, needs their support in an argument against the Treasury, and possibly even a rather weak Prime Minister who won't tell the Treasury what to do in spite of being the first Lord of the Treasury would welcome Robertson's intervention.

7:05Camilla: Oh, this is interesting. Oh, hang on, you're playing 3D chess here. You think that potentially John Healy might have put Lord Robertson up to this to force Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer's hand? The way I would guess it works is not that Healy rings up and says it would be very helpful, but the other way round, that Robertson has a word with Healy and says, would it be helpful if? And Healy says, oh, my goodness, yes, that would be really helpful. I'm in the midst of a big row with Rachel Reeves, who is asking for£3.5 billion in-year cuts. Interestingly, from the Ministry of Defence, interestingly, exactly the amount, a little bit more, than is needed for the two-child policy being removed.

7:49Camilla: Why does she need that from the Ministry of Defence? Well, I think because she's completely useless and the Treasury gets everything wrong and that she doesn't have a broader concern for the country at large. And her whole economic policy has failed and interest rates have gone up. Her economic strategy that was bad to start with has got even worse. And so she's desperate to save any money she can and that she is a socialist. And the left are very often intrinsically pacifist. So I wouldn't trust Labour with defence. That's why they have to work through the pressures to get money released. And the Treasury is one of the worst departments of state.

8:29The Treasury has got so much wrong in this country, really, since the 1990s. Its basic thrust of economic policy has been wrong. Its economic forecasting has been wrong. Its regulatory approach, its changes to tax rules have been complex and have reduced enterprise in this country. So the Treasury is a really rotten institution led by Rachel Reeves, who is a weak figure. I remember her crying at Prime Minister's questions. She is not some tough, robust figure giving great leadership to the Treasury. She is...

8:59Camilla: Well, she cried in the comments, you slept in it. I didn't actually sleep, but it was a very boring debate. Well, quite predictably, Jacob, because we've heard this from the Prime Minister before, Keir Starmer's defence to the accusation that you've got a strategic defence review can you please implement it? And we haven't seen this defence investment plan yet, promised in autumn, still haven't seen it, where is it? That's the Badenot line of attack. And this is the Prime Minister's defence, which is basically to point at the Tories and say, it's all your fault. We inherited plans that were uncosted and undeliverable and we're not going to repeat those mistakes.

9:40She stands there and says, please forget the fact that we hollowed out the armed forces. please clear up our mess.

9:48Camilla: He does make a cogent point there. She is running the risk of looking like she is putting out her own fires once again because the Tories underinvested. Well, there are a number of points to make. First of all, this boast about percentage of GDP is bogus because it includes pensions and it includes GCHQ and it includes MI6. So when you take that down, and it includes Trident, which used to be centrally funded, when you take that down, And what we've actually got for defense, as you might think of it, for the Navy, for the Army, for the RAF, is what, 1.6 percent? So it's much lower than the figure that is advertised.

10:25And it's dishonest. When I was in the cabinet office, there was a ludicrous cabinet committee, committee within the cabinet office that I was trying to close down to save money. And I was told, don't worry your little head about this, because the expenditure on that committee counts towards our 2 percent. So as it then was. Oh, so there's all sorts of jiggery pokery. There's all sorts of jiggery pokery around the figures, and we need to be clear about what we're talking about. Second point is Starmer would have had an excellent case on blaming the Tories in July of 2024 all the way through to July of 2025.

10:59But then he had a defence review presented to him, done by Lord Robertson, with some really expert advice on it, about which he's done what? Absolutely zero. As you said, he promised the response in the autumn. Well, by no definition of time is it still the autumn.

11:18Camilla: Yes. I did once try and extend Christmas for a government response until the last date I could find was February the 15th, I think, which was Candlemas in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Yes. That didn't fly, funny enough. It didn't work. It was intellectually amusing, but it didn't work. There's no way this is autumn. So we are six months late. when the dangers are real and high. And so saying this is things that happened nearly two years ago is now completely irrelevant. So I don't think this line works. It would have worked up until the completion of the Defence Review. But now it's their responsibility.

11:54And it could work in individual cases in relation to our destroyers. Why don't our destroyers work? As I understand it, they've got the wrong propulsion system. And that should have been changed earlier. But you do accept that I think the public perception is as follows.

12:10Camilla: Something happened. Maybe it was actually a lack of appetite after the Iraq war and Tony Blair sort of going gangbusters around the world trying to remove despots with George Bush Jr. That people just said, you know what, I don't have any appetite for this mass defence spending anymore. This whole debate between warfare and welfare, let's be honest, welfare's always polled better. The Tories lost their mojo when it came to rearming the country because they didn't think it was going to be politically expedient to do so, and Labour have continued that rhetoric. Well, I'd go back much further. I'd go back to 1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, victory in the Cold War, which allowed significant decreases in defence expenditure.

12:54And that then carried on and on and on. It wasn't just us. The United States cut defence expenditure. Russia even cut defence expenditure to begin with. China wasn't seen as a threat. So there seemed to be much less need for defence expenditure from the 1990s onwards. Then you get to 2010, 20 years on from that, the Conservatives get into office and the country, having had a Labour government, is bankrupt. So what happens? Cuts are made to defence because that's an easy thing.

13:22Camilla: I know, but hang on, counterargument to that and the Prime Minister earlier was saying how difficult it was for him to have made the decision to cut foreign aid. It's like, well, that did pole well on the doorstep. Everyone wanted foreign aid to be cut. And your old friend, David Cameron, kept on banging on about this 0.7 % of GDP commitment that then became 0.5%. And your lefty mates in the Conservative Party are all hand-wringing going, oh, my God, it's a disaster that we can't fund the Ethiopian Spice Girls. And everyone's going, why on earth did we give upwardly mobile India with its space programme all that money when we could have just built more destroyers?

13:58You know I agree with you. I was opposed to the 0.7 % commitment. I tried to filibuster the bill that put it into UK law. I consistently oppose the ridiculous wasteful overseas aid expenditure, most of which now goes on housing asylum seekers because that counts as overseas aid. So again, you've got dodgy accounting for the money we're currently spending. But that went too far. And I think there's one really important thing that we don't notice. And that's the increase in the danger from 2014. We noticed the increased danger in 2022. 2014, Russia's first invasion of the Crimea. Yes. And the only person who gets this right is the king, who, as Prince of Wales, pointed out that this was just like the Rhineland.

14:42That's right. He compared Putin to Hitler at that engagement. He did indeed. And the foreign office are wringing their hands and everyone's trying to pretend the king didn't mean it as he now is. He got it right, but British public life did not. They went on treating Putin and the EU was dreadful at this. The French and the Germans did the Minsk Accords, which allowed Putin to win. And we didn't suddenly realise that we were in a situation where there was a European enemy. And then 2022 comes. Not only are we not prepared, but there isn't an appetite at that point for much further expenditure.

15:19We've just gone through all the expenditures for Covid. But we quite rightly, and this is one of Boris Johnson's best decisions and Ben Wallace's, divert as many resources as we can to helping Ukraine so that Ukraine is able to avoid immediate defeat, which was a very high risk. All the clever people thought Ukraine would be rolled up within a fortnight.

15:39Camilla: Yes. And Ukraine has held on for four years, which has given us time that we haven't yet used. OK. And that's the real problem, is it's now really, really urgent. And, of course, there's a big orange man on the world stage pointing at us and other European nations and saying that we haven't been spending enough on defence for years. And, by the way, he has threatened to wipe out a civilisation which does somewhat focus the mind when it comes to looking at how many troops we have, how many ships we have, how many planes we have, and so on and so forth. Yes, I mean, I think you're right that we can't rely on the American alliance.

16:17But then we never have been able to, in truth, that we couldn't rely on America in the Second World War. They came in very late. They came in very late in the First World War. They didn't support it over Suez. The Secretary of State, Al Haig, didn't want to support it over the Falklands. You know, America is our most important ally.

16:34Camilla: Yes. But it's not always reciprocal. Well then, so the other attack line, again predictably from the Prime Minister, came with this. I went to the Gulf last week and thanked our armed forces for protecting British lives. She said we should have jumped into the war without thinking about the consequences. Then said, oh no, we shouldn't be in the war the next week. Notwithstanding how frustrating it is to hear Keir Starmer refer to this whole you-haven't-handled-the-Iran-war-well-enough response to a completely different question, he does keep on landing this blow on Bajanock, doesn't he? I don't think it's a relevant blow.

17:09I also think he hasn't handled it at all well. His whole aim in foreign policy was to get on with Donald Trump, which he's now blown up. So he's got no foreign policy left at all, other than to give billions of pounds to the European Union to go back to a quasi-free movement of people and to regulate marmalade. That's his foreign policy, the regulation of marmalade. This is not a great success. Indeed, you might say it's a bit sticky.

17:31Camilla: He also tried to be quite amusing, which is always disturbing when Starmer attempts it, with this use of Gen Z language. Zed, please. She said we should give verbal support. I suppose that standing on the side said, get in there, good luck, mate. You've got this. Mr Speaker, that is her group. There was also a very bizarre moment where Kemi Badenock-Jacob referred to sex toys in the Commons. This is so poor from the Prime Minister. This is... This is... Labour MPs are laughing. Labour MPs are laughing, Mr Speaker. This is a moment of profound national seriousness. And what are they doing? They're promoting sex toys in Parliament.

18:13That's what they're doing. Mr Speaker, it gives a whole new meaning to fiddling while Rome burns.

18:20Camilla: I'm not sure you should be talking about sex toys in the Commons and using the word fiddling. Do you think she didn't actually say that? She just mispronounced the name Sextus. She was talking about a number of serious popes and martyrs. I can't believe that... Should we be discussing sex toys in the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg? I'm happy to talk about Sextus. Fine. Sextus. I love how you've put that to bed. There'll be no discussion of sex toys. Could that be the first time sex toys has appeared in Hansard, Jacob? That's a little project for you for the afternoon, isn't it? Hansard's very good at ensuring it's an accurate record.

18:52Camilla: Indeed. I loved Hansard, actually. They're some of the best people in the House of Commons. I know. Your favourite books, Hansard, Wisden. Oh, Wisden, which just out this week, yes. Oh, you love it. I know, because I've seen all of your Wisdens on your shelves in your London home. Right, so we have that. Let's finally say then on the Fadenock thing, quite clever, though, to say, well, now the Chagos deal is dead. What are you going to do with those billions? That's a good question, isn't it? It's a really good point and it's very important that Chagos' deal should be dead. And the government has been so dishonest about this.

19:27They're saying the Chagossians are upset because they can't go back to Chagos, which the Mauritians were going to allow them to do. The only reason they can't go back to Chagos is because the Foreign Office won't let them. It's stopping them. And do you know how vicious this government was to the supply boat that was taking supplies to the Chagosians who were there. Really vindictive and nasty. And this is the black heart of socialism, that they don't like being crossed. And when they do, they abuse the power of the state. So what were they taking? They were taking water purifiers. Yes, their filtration system.

19:58And they stopped that on customs ground. I think this is really wicked. And this is the totalitarian state. We should always be suspicious of socialist governments because they abuse power whenever they can. And when they're crossed, they don't behave in a rational way. They behave in a vindictive way. And I think it's an absolutely classic, really nasty form of socialism in action in stopping water supplies, effectively water purifications, equipment getting through to people who are making a very valid political point that they've actually won.

20:32Camilla: Do you know who else is suspicious of socialists? The Welsh. We'll get on to discussing that next.

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21:44Price and coverage match limited by state law.

21:55Well, in the land of the leak, Jacob, all is not well with Labour.

22:00Camilla: Now, Labour have had a vice-like grip on Wales since Margaret Thatcher closed the coal mines, let's be honest. Oh, longer than that. Longer than that. If you talk to Dan Hannan, it was an absolute bastion of Toryism. Sunday Telegraph columnist and former MEP. Former MEP and very distinguished figure. It was the most Tory part of Parliament in the early 18th century. Right. When you were born. Well, I was trying to stand for election there then. Yes. I am. I have strong Welsh antecedents. I am, after all, a reese. And my mother, before she got married, was a Miss Morris. So I can say look you along with the best of them.

22:37Camilla: Do you know what? And my maternal grandmother was a Hluelyn Lloyd-Jones. Well, there we go. Couldn't get more Welsh than that. Well, yeah. But in the last hundred years, it's been either Liberal or Labour. Its Conservative vote has tended to be quite small, with 2019 was an exception. This time, it looks like calypso-collapso for Labour, but all going plied or reform. Indeed. So the entire, all of the red dots on the map have been completely wiped out, according to analysis by our political editor, Tony Diver. Now, I think reform had hoped to do better in Wales. But what does it mean for both the Conservatives and Labour if, come May the 7th, both of those main major parties aren't just wiped out in Wales, but in Scotland too, Jacob?

23:25Camilla: I mean, this is quite a serious realignment that could be on the cards. It is. And we're going to have to look at how things operated with the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists. that you may have to have different arrangements in different parts of the country because Westminster needs a government that is made up of one party, essentially. But that one party may need to do deals and you may well see Labour having to do deals with the SNP and with Plaid if it were to form a government after the next election and potentially with the Greens. And it pushes the point home for the Conservatives and Reform to try and arrange something as well.

24:03Camilla: Also, with Plaid, if Plaid does sweep the board, do we then need to be worried about Welsh independence in the same way we were when the SNP triumphed in Scotland? No, because Plaid don't seem really to be very interested in Welsh independence. They're a left-wing party that seeks to replace the Labour Party rather than independence really being something that many people in Wales are fundamentally asking for. Bear in mind the referendum was very narrow. But then that does suggest a failure for the right in Wales, doesn't it? I mean, we have written on the Telegraph countless stories about Welsh incompetence and how far educational standards have slumped, how badly the NHS in Wales has been doing.

24:44Camilla: You know, every turn it's disaster after disaster. Let's not forget Mark Drakeford and others being wholly wedded to Covid restrictions. And, you know, they haven't covered themselves in glory at all. Therefore, you might want to think that they won't replace lefties with lefties. They might try something different. Why aren't they? They won't do that because both in Wales and Scotland, you've got economies that are completely dependent on taxpayer funding and therefore you vote for more of it. The pain you would have to go through to create successful capitalist economies is more than voters are willing to go through.

25:19They are therefore going to carry on asking for greater public subsidy and therefore things will carry on getting worse in Wales and in Scotland almost indefinitely because this is such a good point you made. As always, you always make brilliant points. But for once, you can see the direct comparison. You know how it is. We see it at Prime Minister's Questions. I say the Tories are marvellous. Labour man says the Labour Party is marvellous. Yabu sucks. You can't prove it. Health and education from 2010 to 2024, you can prove it. Conservative policies in England, education policies, saw English schools going up and up the international league tables, Welsh and Scottish ones collapsing.

25:59Health service, longer waiting lists in Wales and Scotland proportionate to England. Much worse outcomes as well in both of those parts of the United Kingdom. So you could do the direct comparison between Labour policies and SNP policies and Conservative policies. Yes. And you see that Conservatism actually in practice works even in the public sector, which is really important because people instinctively think the Conservative Party is not the party of the public sector. But we are because we know how to run things.

26:29Camilla: But you have got unionist in your name and if the Conservative Party isn't the party of either Wales or Scotland, that could be existential for you, no? No, because reform is unionist as well and I'd like to look at the broad Tory family. I may be the only person who looks at the broad Tory family, but I like them. That's a convenient fudge. Well, no, hang on a minute. So first of all, we're facing the prospect of not having any Conservatives in Wales and Scotland, or very few, or if they are there, they're lesser spotted. They only come out at the weekends or something. They might in today's instance be lesser hearted, but they might.

27:06Camilla: Well, possibly. I think that's really problematic for the Tories because then you're seen as an England only party. And if reform are actually second in both of those nations, then people will be rightfully asking themselves, what's the point of conservatism? Well, I think the Conservative Party and reform need to come to some arrangement. Now, bear in mind, in Scotland, Wales, you've got proportional systems for boating. So it'll be different from a Westminster election. But in the Westminster election, first past the post, you need to consolidate your bait. And therefore, these are places where we should be working together as a matter of urgency.

27:39Camilla: The only consolation, of course, is that the Conservatives' woes may be outstripped, may be trumped by just how badly Labour is going to do. I mean, if you're Keir Starmer and you're looking at Tony Diver's piece today, which, by the way, we will link to the show notes so you can have a look at the map yourself, if you're the Prime Minister, I mean, it's no wonder he keeps on disappearing off to the Gulf. It's all too difficult at home, isn't it? Well, it's always the way. Prime Ministers always get abroad when it's too difficult at home. But there are no votes in foreign policy. You need to be at home.

28:08but he can't go and campaign everywhere because anywhere he goes people look so glum they look so sad when he turns up it's just humiliating for the poor man no indeed well it's beginning to feel sorry for him

28:19Camilla: oh are you? not really no not yet right on that bombshell we'll be back tomorrow together at 5pm thank you

28:38Thank you.