Burnham’s cringey Gen Z love-in as youth unemployment soars

0:03The Telegraph. Burnham's cringe-fest continues as he cozies up to Gen Z's in a lad Bible sit-down with pints of water. But he's not doing anything to help them with their biggest problems, as youth unemployment remains high and job vacancies hit their lowest in five years. and a total lack of integrity. Chancellor John Healy and Defence Secretary Wes Streeting are slammed over the government's£2 billion worth of cuts to the army. Could defence spending be the great undoing of hypocritical Healy's budget?

0:45Tim, we can now proudly say that our YouTube Daily Tea Plus membership is in the hundreds. Hundreds, because when I last looked, it was 100. Well, that's why I'm saying we can say it's in the hundreds-ish. We need some more people, but we're going to do a Q &A later this week, so you can ask us anything you like about the budget, state of the nation, politics, our unique dress sense, your wardrobe, my hairdo. Anything you like, you can ask us. Is this thing going to evolve inch by inch into an OnlyFans situation? Well, maybe we'd get more viewers. Because I think everything's going that way. The Prime Minister is going to strip soon.

1:21I'm warning you, it will happen. Some people, there's a market for that. Not with me. Not me. But what do you think? If we did this podcast in our underwear, we'd get more hits? I think we'd get taken down. Don't know. I think there's a European law against that. I'm sure my children wouldn't agree with it. Speaking of whom, how down are you with the Gen Zs? Not very. No. Were you ever down with your own generation, let alone the Gen Zs? I've always hated the young. Right. Even when you were young. But the company of the old. And the thing is, the sad thing is that the vintage of the old has declined.

1:54Because when you and I were young, the old had fought in a war. Exactly. My granddad in the Royal Navy. Now, at best, they went to the Isle of Wight Music Festival in 1970, which is still interesting. I think there's a very anti-boomer vibe out there. I like boomers. I love them. They were really interesting people. My dad's one. Your mum's one. But they marched at Aldermaston. They had free love. They did really interesting things. My mum got off with the lead singer of Free. There you go. Yeah. And by the way, when I think of you as a toddler, I do imagine you in a little tweed suit with a little bow tie.

2:29No. Were you that child? No, I wasn't. But my mother was, is a follower of fashion. So we always looked like the decade we were in. So family photos are a history of fashion. I tell you what, that is something for the Daily Tee Plus YouTube membership, isn't it? Our childhood photos. Well, what I did used to wear, which was very big in the 80s, was a red 1C anorak, if that makes sense. Yes. You look like a big red star. Yeah, not that. For some reason, that was very in in the 80s. And that fitted in with your ideology at the time. I was born, as you know, in a twin set and pearls. Yes. Which was fun for my mother.

3:12We're talking about Gen Zed Lovins because, did you catch Ladbible? Oh, by the way, should we move the teapot? I'll ask you a question, then we'll move the teapot towards you, depending on your answer. Can we explain to people what Ladbible is? Ladbible is an online media organisation for young lads and lasses, Gen Zeds, talking about the issues of the day, but also talking about entertainment and culture. It's the word for anyone. The word for 2026, but I think slightly cleaner. No one in our staff, no one in our production team will know what the word is. I'll do anything to get on TV. Well, hang on, on the word, people were snogging grannies.

3:52Also, people were very high on drugs. I'm not sure. It's a bit cleaner than that. And it's meant to be kind of floating intelligent ideas and having debates about the issues that really matter. And the way they do that is that they have a pint each. And in this case, it was water. I mean, Andy Burnham thinks he's a man of the people and likes pork scratchings, but no matter. and it was like asking questions and then moving the pint in the direction of strongly agree or strongly disagree so it's like have you seen live bible do you think it's good strongly agree you're moving teapots yes um but of course andy burdom's doing this on the back of i'm on the train and i get really irritated by people's music so we're going to crack down on that and then we've had this angela rayner announcing this oh we're going to crack down on parking cowboys and if you're five minutes late to get back to the car park then don't worry the government's going to protect you.

4:39Now just to be fair to the Prime Minister, this is about fixing the little irritants in your life which add to the cost of living. Burnham and Rayner are little irritants in my life but carry on. And I have never understood why there is a tolerance for music on trains. No. And I don't understand why action hasn't been taken sooner to do something about it. In the very early days, can I just tell you this, it sounds apocryphal, it's actually true, in the very early days of iPhones and when everyone was wired up, no wireless, my older brother, who's had a history of sometimes taking people on, let's put it that way, was so incensed by somebody playing their music loudly through their headphones, you know, when you could hear what they were doing, that he got out his little Swiss army knife and just cut the wire.

5:25And he told us this and I said, Ben, you could have been killed. What are you thinking? Because you can't take these people on because they're often in groups. Yes. And as a kind of, they think I'm a boomer, I'm actually Gen X, as a boomer mum, going up to a group of lads who are all playing music or looking at some video. But also, if you're English, which does exist, if you are English, there's a tension between, I can't stand hearing your music, but also, I don't want to raise my voice. No. It's a battle of the manners, isn't it? Sometimes there's just passive aggressive staring going on. We do a lot of that.

5:56It's like the sudden cock of the head. But anyway, to be fair to the government, this is about addressing these little nuisances that add to the cost of living. So they go hand in glove with things like capping bus fares at two pounds. And we all suspect this is a build up to a general election, right? So you haven't got any money to spend. So you do little things like this. So you create a buzz among the population that Andy gets it and wants to fix my problems. The issue is there is an increasingly unavoidable, enormous gulf between the ambitions of the government. I want positivity. I want to bring people back together.

6:32I want to end poverty. I want to grow the economy. And what the government's actually doing. He keeps on diagnosing the problems rather than providing the solutions. And that's not a bad thing for someone to do. But as we tiptoe towards a budget next week, which we all suspect we're going to discuss defence later on, but we all suspect there isn't going to be anything in it. The vibe is it is going to be a steady as she goes budget. And then you hear that nearly one million young people are not in education, employment or training. Yes. And you're thinking, so what is your solution to that enormous problem?

7:14Well, Alan Milburn, former Labour minister, has said that the answer is to put people into training to get them off welfare and into work. OK, maybe that's going to cost a lot of money. But my point is, we all know there's this massive problem. We all know that the state is running out of money. We all know that we spend too much on welfare. So whatever reform we do has got to involve us, please, spending less in the long run, not more. And what does the prime minister do in the midst of this? He goes on Ladbible and answers questions about Oasis and VAR. Now, let's just quickly run through some of those questions and see what we think and what our audience thinks.

7:55Question one, and we can't simulate the moving the pint back and forth, but question one, Gen Z have it harder than boomers. Well, possibly when it comes to getting on housing ladders and all that because boomers were able to buy properties in South London for£1 ,000. But then comparatively, they didn't earn very much money. What was the mortgage ratio to income that you had to have in the 1970s? It was about four to one. Yes. So it was very hard. I mean, listen, let's not even get on to kind of pre and post-war abject poverty. The print of a price is criminal. Well, yeah, I suppose we can all agree with that.

8:36Always has been. It's caused by the government. I mean, it's harder for people, young people to get a job than ever before. Well, yes, certainly now, Prime Minister, because we've just learned that there are 20 ,000 fewer vacancies in this quarter than in last quarter. So we have got this situation. We discussed it in the French riots. It's a good answer, though, doesn't it? Because what he wants to be is a listening prime minister. As you've said, you're spot on. He's very good at diagnosing and discussing problems. How are you feeling, Doris? How are you bunions? But what he will not address is the things, the decisions taken by this government in the last two years that have made that problem so much worse.

9:11Yes. It is becoming more and more expensive to employ young people. and sometimes the things that governments do to make life better for people who are already in their job like raising the minimum wage or extra safeguards so you can't be sacked and things like that they're great for them but they actually lock people out of the jobs market because when you're young an employer is looking to take a risk on you yeah you do not have experience and training behind you so you are worth less on the market i'm sorry horrible thing to say shoot me up against a brick wall, but you are worth less to an employer.

9:45Yes. So you have to lower the cost of your labour to make it worth the employer taking a punt on you. Yes. But if you get a socialist government that comes in and says, no, you must pay them exactly the same amount as someone who's been in the job for 30 or 40 years, and you must make it impossible for them to sack them once you've hired them, the employer is just going to go, well, I won't hire. Yeah. It's a labour trio, a triangle of disaster for young employees. Yeah. And that is putting up national insurance for employers, even though they said they weren't putting up national insurance at all, according to the manifesto.

10:16OK, that was breached. Second of all, as you say, it's the employment rights bill, which entrenches rights for workers, which means that they remain unsackable. What if they're rubbish because they've only just started in the workplace and all the rest of it? And as you say, it was the well-meaning but disastrous minimum wage hike. why would you take on somebody to wash glasses at a pub age 16 on minimum wage where you could get somebody with 10 more years experience who can also manage the pub and do a load of other jobs so the whole thing has been a disaster but again you see him sort of sitting down answering questions don't the youth of today see through this stuff by the way i mean i this is the other thing we had that whole uh string of headlines last week about 3 000 areas where more than half of the population are on benefits.

10:59The idea that younger people claiming benefits for mental health problems has shot up. At what point does Gen Z actually hold the sitting government responsible for that? I'm not sure they're buying Brexit and Maggie Thatcher being to blame, considering that most of them certainly don't remember the latter and have probably well forgotten the former because of everything that happened during the pandemic. I mean, they might blame COVID and the last government's inability to properly deal with it. But again, people were furloughed, exams were cancelled and all the rest of it. I just, you know, another one of the questions.

11:31It is increasingly unsafe to be a girl in the UK. Oh, God. Well, it was probably quite unsafe to be a girl back in the dark ages where people were throwing up from an at you out. How far back are we comparing? Your teeth are coming out. I mean, I don't know. Are we going back to 10 to 60? This is my all-time favourite. Men should talk more about their feelings. No. Burnham agreed. Of course, Burnham agreed with that. I have to say, if you watch it, his answers are more nuanced than you might think. And he's quite savvy. He's capable of saying, you know, things weren't all brilliant back in the day, or sometimes we can overspeak and all this sort of thing.

12:05But on the question men need to talk about more, I can say as a man, no, I wish they would speak less. I'm sick of hearing about it. Well, I wish everyone would speak less about their bloody feelings. Get on and just do things. It's like that brilliant Joanna Lumley sentence to our colleague Nick Brown that went viral, saying, oh, no, I don't want to self-reflect. I'm as shallow as a puddle. Thank you, Lummers, you absolute legend. Nobody's interested in me. To be fair... When you get older, you do figure this out. I know you do. The penny does drop. No one cares. No one cares. Kids, no one cares.

12:35You're on your own. You're on your own. To be fair, the government will be happy that the unemployment rate has fallen slightly to 4.7%, but we've still got this massive problem with youth unemployment. We've still got this problem, by the way, of too many young people who are able to work but aren't working, being stuck on benefits and the cyclical nature of that. Can you actually ever get them off it? So I just I don't know. Is there a sense that he is fiddling while Britain burns here with doing these stranger? If it's not Ladbible, it's going on Reddit. I mean, come in here. We'll do a great big Sunday showdown with him.

13:13There is an acknowledgement that communications was a big problem with Geir Starmer. And to some extent, that is cope, as the young say. By the way, Andy Burnham is clearly aura farming. Oh. And I find it really cringe. Do you? I love the lingo that you're using. What is aura farming? Aura farming is you're just going around getting attention and doing nothing with it. Yes. You're just looking good and being great, but it's probably quite fake. It's probably quite surface. Yeah, he's up to use more Gen Z lingo. He's a bit of a pick me. No, that one I don't know. Pick me is kind of like... Because that never happened to me.

13:54I don't even know really how to divine it. Neither on the football pitch nor Tinder. It's kind of when you say things that you know people want to hear. Yeah. And also, by the way... That's a politician's job. By the way, the other kind of elephant in the room here is... do most gen sets know who this bloke is? Did I tell you about... I mean, she's an alpha. Last time, so that's been up for 24 hours, the Lad Bible interview. Last time we both looked, it had 33 ,000 views on YouTube. I mean, that is a very bad day for the Daily Tea. No, but it's bad for the Lad Bible too. I mean, I don't know what their usual traffic is for one day, but there are videos on there that are well over a million that have been viewed.

14:36And he is the prime minister. Can you imagine if Donald Trump sat down with someone? And I know he has global name recognition. But the point is, if Burnham doesn't interview, if your prime minister doesn't interview, it should be a major event. And this is something I want to raise, the jacket and tie issue. Ah, you're now being bothered by it. Now, here's the thing with young people. I used to teach in a university, so I used to deal directly with youngsters. I wish I was in your classes, can I just say. You should never patronise them. No. Never underestimate them. But don't flatter them just because they're young.

15:13Yes. Don't do that. They don't respect that. No. They want to be spoken to as an adult, not necessarily as an equal, partly because they're trying to figure out why should I listen to you and you've got to give them a reason to listen to you. Now, when you're a lecturer, you do that in part through knowledge. You know this stuff. They don't. But you also do it in manner and bearing. And I found that when I was a lecturer about like 15 years ago, I made a point, which none of my colleagues did, of always wearing a jacket and tie and always shaving. And I had like 100 percent attendance in my lectures.

15:53Did you? People did the reading. Do you think it was because you were… I believe it's because of the way that I dressed and behaved. Maybe there was a Jacob Rees-Mogg eccentricity factor. Yes. But academics don't normally do that. They dress very down. As the years have gone by, and I will address this and admit it, I have let myself go. I tell you what, I was thinking this only this week. Look at you. And I'm not alone. Think about how office culture has changed. When you and I first joined the Telegraph, this was a suit and tie place. And if you didn't dress properly, you wouldn't get on. Can I just say, I haven't let myself go.

16:25You haven't let yourself go because you're a very classy lady. But the men, journalists nowadays just look... borderline homeless right like shirts untucked look at sam i will admit the guy but come on and i i regret this about myself i have let myself go don't worry i'll get you into shape when we think about you know i have a lot of dealings with the church uh how the clergy present themselves whenever you see a vicar who dresses down and talks to the kids like he's a kid and plays a guitar it's cringe yeah when a when a vicar comes on and he's wearing one of those old-fashioned roman dog collars and it's not because he's rigid and stuck up but it's because he's dressed the part and he's signaling to the audience i care about this listen to me because i have made the effort to embody the thing that i am describing to you i would bet that that priest commands far more respect and authority among their congregation so to bring this around to a prime minister On the Lad Bible, Andy is slumped in his seat, hair's not good, and he's wearing a black T-shirt, black top, black trousers.

17:33It looks like Johnny Cash. If the young people in that audience don't know who he is, they won't know who he is by the end of it either. Well, on that note, and by the way, can I just say that inadvertently you've shared quite a lot of your feelings on this podcast today about how you feel about your own dress. I've let myself go. And your own self. I'm just so tired. I'm just so tired. I've just given up. I think I better take you to Zara. But I think the country has given up. England has changed in this regard, and it is one reason why faith in politics has collapsed. I'm not giving up. People don't want faceless suits.

18:05I know that. They don't want Cameron. They want someone who's authentic and someone with a bit of character. But they want someone who looks like they've made a bloody effort in the morning and someone who is able to project authority. And that man being interviewed looking like a child by children. Children does not command any authority. But you're right on Cameron. I mean, my kids love that scene from PMQs with Corbyn. What my mother would say, put on a tie and sing the national anthem. Because you're British. But can I give you a final thought? We have to do this for foreigners. We have to do this so that they can see.

18:44Can I give you a final thought, which is actually from the mouth of a babe, a gen alpha, my youngest, 13. she saw this and she went who's that bloke it's the prime minister yeah what yeah it doesn't look like a prime minister why is he speaking like that i say well he's a northerner right what happened to the other bloke what happened to that starmer bloke i went oh he's out and this guy's in yeah really and we could do this for any prime minister up until recent years we could say go and watch tony blair go and watch gordon brown but seriously just go on youtube right now and look at Margaret Thatcher being interviewed by young people, which she did quite a lot.

19:22And what's really affecting is the respect that she shows to them and the respect that they show in return, even if they strongly disagree with her. Unless it was more of an era of respecting your elders. It is an era, yeah, but it's to do with her manner and her tone. She doesn't talk down to them. She doesn't patronise them, but she also doesn't flatter them. And if people complain that politicians can't get done, No one trusts politics. No one's involved in democracy. It's partly because of the way that politicians behave. They try and flatter and speak down to the voters rather than projecting a bit of authority, which I believe if they did it, people would respond to and say, all right, tell me what you want to do.

20:04I'll give you a chance to do it because you, at least this morning, have run a razor blade over your chin and put a tie on. Neither of which I did. Me neither.

20:20I'm Vinicius Rainey. And I'm Roland Olyphant. As hosts of The Telegraph's podcast Iran The Latest, it's our job to keep you up to speed on what's going on in the Middle East. Join us every day as we ask, can the US put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions once and for all? Who will come out on top in the peace talks? Has this war damaged America's ability to take on China? And what are the long-term implications for the wider world? Search Iran The Latest and listen wherever you get your podcasts. We're also now on video. Watch us on YouTube and on The Telegraph's website.

20:58Camilla, I was in the House of Commons on Monday when Wes Streeting took defence questions. Yes. And they mentioned you. They did. Shall we listen to it? Now, Mr. Speaker, on the 26th of July, he appeared on the Camilla Tomini show on GB News and was asked the following question. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer doesn't stump up enough defence spending, will he resign? Absolutely, replied the Secretary of State.

21:23Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Is that still the case?

21:28Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Absolutely. So that was the Shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, pointing out that on a previous episode of my show, I had said to West Streeting, if you don't reach 3 % of GDP on defence spending by 2030, which was the original goal that John Healy resigned over, will you in turn resign? And now they're getting their knickers into a twist because Andy Burnham, he either misled or misspoke in the House of Commons at a previous PMQs where he seemed to suggest that the goal was 3 % by 2035. And then critics said, no, it's not 3 % by 2035 that Healy resigned over. It's 3.5 % by 2035. It's 3 % by 2030.

22:10And now both Streeting and Burnham seem to be obfuscating somewhat. All eyes are on the budget on October the 28th. Will it be busted by a defence spending pledge gone awry by a Chancellor that resigned over defence spending? That's the question, Tim. John Healy and Wes Streeting do not want to have to resign. No. Because they've not hit the 3 % target. But they look like hypocrites if they don't. In order to evade that outcome, it looks like what they're doing is they're pushing the timetable back for the extra spend so that they will hit it sometime in the future. And that way they don't have to resign in the present.

22:48But Westreating has also said that the Ministry of Defence needs to clamp down on overspend. Yes. So we're going to spend more, but we're also going to demand efficiencies at the same time, which is not unreasonable because departments do do that and defence can be incredibly costly. You know, you get generals who say you need the latest equipment and it turns out you don't. But the question is, are those efficiencies going to come from front line spending? And I think the other question to ask is they're boasting of spending 2.7 % on defence, which is more than the Tories spent, 2.5%. So they're saying we are spending record amounts on defence.

23:32But in the background, we are reporting different things happening, like, for instance, training programmes being scaled back,£2 billion worth of cuts here. We've also heard about the cadets and other reserve forces being scrapped. So let's speak to Hamish. Put into a national service. They're being amalgamated into one giant service. But whatever, it all seems to be a slow kind of creep of kind of denigration. And also the goalposts on this defence spending, I'm afraid they keep on slipping. One minute, it's a pleasure and a promise. The next, it's a pathway. It's an ambition. It's this, it's that.

24:07Hamish de Breton Gordon is a former army colonel and one of our columnists. And you're writing a piece about this today. Hamish, what's the truth of this matter? Where are we at and what's being cut?

24:20Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Well, what we think, or certainly what's reported in the Telegraph today, is that Boxer, which is an eight-wheeled armoured fighting vehicle, is having£2 million cut from its budget. Now, as far as I'm aware, Boxer is on budget and on time. So saying that it's over, there's no excuse there. I think what is really frustrating and galling about this, this strikes me as a decision made by people who know absolutely nothing about how an army fights and how it operates. And we're learning so much from Ukraine at the moment and we're changing and adapting. But on the one hand, I think people like Healy and Streeting who have a peripheral understanding of the military now think, well, we'll just have loads of drones and we'll win.

25:09Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Well, that is not the case. And on the face of it, we're still getting the majority of the boxers which will be fighting at the front and the artillery pieces that are on these vehicles. But what they're cutting is the ability to repair and recover them, which is just unbelievable madness. Because these things, if you can't repair and recover them, the sharp tip of the armoured spear, as it will, will very quickly be blunted. And the final bit on this, I've talked about the drones, but what we're also learning from Ukraine, the only way to take and hold ground is with soldiers and armoured vehicles, of course, heavily supported by drones.

25:57Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: but what we're sort of doing here is losing that or certainly losing that ability to do it over time so it seems like on the face of it that's fine just cut that we've still got the tanks we still got the thing at the front but actually everybody knows it's the logistics that are really the important thing and it just seems this is a decision made by people who just don't understand what fighting and fighting today. This is stuff we're learning from Ukraine. This is not legacy. This is not fighting yesterday's war. This is the ability to fight the future war. And if Healy and Streeting don't understand it, by God, I bet the generals sitting in the Kremlin are sort of licking their lips at this.

26:41Hamish, as I was watching the Secretary of State for Defence speak, I noticed that partly because the department is so revered because its job is so important, it's possible for him to hide behind certain conventions. So when Marc-Francois for the Tories asked about a lack of submarine patrols to defend against the Russians, West Streeting was able to say, I don't comment on operational matters. When Andrew Rosendale pointed out that the Navy has been cut, that the number of frigates has been halved since 2020, so how could we physically defend the Falklands? West Streeting was able to say, I think it's irresponsible for people in this house to comment upon whether or not the Falklands are undefensible.

27:22In other words, you can very easily retreat either into patriotism, let's not talk about that because you're talking the country down, or as I say, this sense of we cannot discuss what's actually going on operationally. But what actually is the state of the armed forces when it comes to something like the Falklands? Do we actually have the ability to project force in the way that we used to?

27:47Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: well i think first of all you know i get the point of not talking about operational matters um but but that that is things that are happening absolutely now but talking about things like boxer and whether submarines are available to patrol that absolutely needs to be put forward but your question is you know what is our ability to project power i you know i i am a massive fan of the mod i've been involved in i was a soldier for a long time my son's a soldier you know we're all heavily invested in it. I still think, you know, everything that's been said and written, we still have the capability to project power and to do stuff, but for a really short time.

28:26Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: And the Boxer decision yesterday sort of personifies that, you know, okay, we can do something for a couple of weeks, but we can't endure, you know, if we could stop the Russians in a couple weeks, then fine, we've got enough. If we could defend the Falklands or retake them in a couple of weeks, then that's fine. And if the Argentinians aren't prepared, but unfortunately, the enemy has a vote in all of this. And we know that wars aren't short. Putin thought he'd take Ukraine in three days, you know, nearly five years later. And it's that endurance that really worries us. So I think we've got a fantastic first 15, first 11, as it were.

29:09Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Unfortunately, the second and third 11s are just not there. Everything's been hollowed out. And I know, you know, I'm a huge fan of the military and, you know, the young boys and girls are absolutely the best we can get. But unless we invest in them, you know, I don't think morale is flaky, but I know that this boxer decision, I know speaking to chums in the army, they are really hacked off by it and it's that you know sapping of morale and everything else and you know when when streeting and others talk about yeah social security must come first rather than national security you know you just really wonder what where how these people think and work things out because of course it is national security that allows everything else to happen and at the moment we are you know we we are completely underfunding it uh to a degree but a very long answer your question.

30:05Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: The tip of the spear is great, but it's not very big. I wonder whether you agree with this, Hamish, and whether you think top brass agree with this comment. We've had loads of comments to this story from Telegraph readers. Alan Roberts writes, Healy is truly despicable with no moral backbone. He resigned from the Defence Secretary post in protest at the grossly inadequate defence spending. And astonishingly, he now presides over continued gross inadequacy as Chancellor. It's obvious he cooked up a careerist deal with Burnham before Burnham became PM and this says something extremely wrong and disturbing about them both.

30:42Our country is being ravaged by an invasion and left open to the likes of Putin and Xi to finish the job. What in God's name are we to do? It's getting extremely dangerous for us all. I appreciate the slight tone of hysteria but that is quite representative of what quite a few people in the UK think both about the state of our defences and indeed the state of our Defence Secretary and Chancellor right now.

31:07Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Yeah, I mean, I agree the tone. And I was a big fan of John Healy when he was Defence Secretary. I think he did a good job. And I think people across the three services respected him. And when he resigned because Starmer was not going to give that 3 % of defence, I think we all thought, you know, good on him. he can really do some damage on the back benches and get defence back on the agenda. But, you know, as the inference of that comment, when he got the top job, he then sort of reneged on it. And, you know, us soldiers, well, I think everybody, integrity is the byword to what everybody should live by.

31:54Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: And Healy, to me, is, you know, he's showing he lacks integrity, which is a shocking position for somebody in such an important job. And it goes back to the piece that I've written. The whole thing just smacks of people who are not fully on top of their brief. They don't really understand these things. I'm not saying that we should have ex-military people as defence secretaries and ministers, but it does help to have a few people there with a bit of experience because the top brass, you know, they can advise and all the rest of it and influence, but they can't make decisions at the end. They are, you know, they are just servants of the nation.

32:37Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: So, yeah, it really does concern me that this is a really damaging thing by people who appear to lack integrity when I thought that they were absolutely on the ball in his previous job. We could be surprised next week. They could suddenly pull 3 % of GDP out of the bag in the budget. I think it's highly unlikely. What do you think? I think it's very unlikely, especially given they're not willing to cut welfare to finance it. In fact, they're talking instead now about a large upfront payment to support training. So if anything, they're going to be spending more money, not less. Hamish, I would like to ask us a final question.

33:15Given everything that's going on with regards to the military, yesterday was also debating the Troubles Bill, which many veterans fear leaves them exposed to litigation for people who served in Northern Ireland. You've also got questions of appropriate funding. An image that went viral of an officer saying publicly that politicians have got to be frank about the cost of defence which many people responded to by saying it's not just a question of how much we spend but do we actually know what we're fighting for? Do you feel that soldiers think civilians have their back? What is the morale like?

33:50in the armed forces?

33:53Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Yeah, I think that is a really good question. I think morale at the shot face, at the front line, is pretty good because, as I said to begin with, I still think pound for pound. We train, we recruit, you know, the best young men and women and are well trained. But when you talk about the troubles, Bill, when you talk about, you know, SAS being hounded in Afghanistan, You know, it's it's a very different world. And, you know, for somebody who's had their hair parted a few times by a bullet in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, it's a very different life there than sat in Whitehall or Westminster making decisions about whether to prosecute people and all the rest of it.

34:38Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: And, you know, it is, you know, fighting is not a peacetime activity. And therefore, you know, making peacetime decisions, legal decisions and all the rest of it, they must be put in context. And whatever people think, we need the SAS. We need our military people, you know, doing dangerous things to protect us. And nobody is above the law. But I think we just want fairness. And the troubles, Bill, you know, when you look at. The IRA terrorists were given animacies, you know, that pushed aside. But we've still got all these veterans being handed, many with no or virtually no evidence at all. And ultimately, it is a really dangerous and difficult game.

35:22Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: So morale, I think, is good. But to be able to maintain this capability to provide a deterrence and maintain the ability to get our best young people into the front line to protect us. You know, we the nation, I'm sure, is behind it. But politicians who, you know, you'll know better than I, they have such a short term view on life and make short term decisions that really impact the long term. And that when it comes to defence and when it comes to, you know, making sure that the soldiers know that the politicians have got their back is is really, really challenging. so you know I'm still confident in the men and women in our military but by god it's more difficult now than it used to be.

36:07Hamish de Breton Gordon thank you very much indeed for joining us on the Daily Tea.

36:11Hamish de Bretton-Gordon: Thank you for having me. I was just sitting there listening to Hamish and thinking to myself Tim how would West Streeting feel if his perfectly quaffed bro-creamed hair was parted by a sniper's bullet somewhere in the Middle East? I think the only person who has parted West Streeting's hair are Messrs. Tony and Guy. I think that's probably right. Don't tell them your name, Mike. Right, we'll be back tomorrow, 5pm.

36:54Rev. Premal papad -