Starmer hit by new China spying scandal after brutal PMQs

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:14Tim Stanley: Three men have been arrested on suspicion of spying for China, and one of them is the partner of a sitting Labour MP.

1:22Camilla Tominey: It's the last thing Keir Starmer needed after a bruising PMQs in which Kemi Beignock called him weak and pathetic on defence.

1:30Tim Stanley: And is Britain unprepared for war? We crunch the numbers.

1:35Camilla Tominey: Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley.

1:37Tim Stanley: And me, Camilla Tominy.

1:48Tim Stanley: Tim, we'll get on to the substance of PMQs in just a minute, but a remarkable moment afterwards, it seems Labour have become embroiled in yet another Chinese spying scandal.

1:59Camilla Tominey: Yes, Security Minister Dan Jarvis gave a surprise statement in which he could say very little because there is an ongoing legal case, but it would seem that three men have been arrested, suspected of carrying out espionage. They are linked to China and he hinted they have some link to Parliament. Well, that would seem to be that one of the arrested men is a partner of a sitting Labour MP.

2:30Tim Stanley: Yes, and this husband of an MP has just been named him, David Taylor, who is married to Joni Reid, elected as the Labour MP to East Kilbride in Scotland at the last general election. So very new to Parliament, elected in July 2024. What do we know about Mr Taylor? Born in 1986, he was or is the Head of Programs at the Asia House think tank, which develops engagement between Asia and Europe. He's understood to have worked for energy companies as a lobbyist and as a government special advisor in the Wales office under the new Labour government. Following the arrest, she has said, this is Joni Reid, the Labour MP, I've never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken the law.

3:19Camilla Tominey: And this follows hot off the heels of the Chinese spying trial collapsing,

3:25Tim Stanley: which also involved two men that were accused of spying for China. That's Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, an academic. But that collapsed because there wasn't sufficient evidence. It could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat. But that prompted a huge row because some ministers had already said in the House that China was a security threat. So why wasn't the government able to supply that information to the Crown Prosecution Service? And it led critics of the government to say there's something very fishy going on here.

4:01Camilla Tominey: And of course, this is also against the background of China being given the green light to build a mega embassy in London with a massive basement that abuts some very important communication cables that run to the city.

4:14Tim Stanley: And, of course, Jimmy Lai. We spoke to his son, Sebastian, quite recently on The Daily Tea. He's the British businessman, the media tycoon that's still languishing in solitary confinement in Hong Kong, having been arrested in 2020. And then he was sentenced to a further 20 years. We had Keir Starmer go out to China. Jimmy Lai's family said, well, can you please help to secure his release? and then he returned from Beijing where he was humiliated, according to Yang Chang, somebody else that we interviewed, the Chinese dissident. He was humiliated because President Xi didn't even bother to personally give him a tour of the, what was it, the Forbidden City?

4:53Tim Stanley: Forbidden City, yes. Exactly. Talking about humiliating and embarrassing.

4:57Camilla Tominey: Is this a reference to PMQs or the big line dancing session that took place in Parliament just before PMQ?

5:05Tim Stanley: Yes, Angela Rippon.

5:06Camilla Tominey: Dance with Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker. And very nice it was too.

5:11Tim Stanley: Was it? Oh, you're so jolly. There are a lot of people on X going, what are you doing, you overpaid elitists. Yeah, well, they're miserable, aren't they? Get on with your job.

5:17Camilla Tominey: I will acknowledge this. It unfortunately does coincide with MPs being given a 5 % pay raise, which brings their salary into the mid-90 ,000s.

5:27Tim Stanley: Although they say it's an independent body, it's nothing to do with us.

5:29Camilla Tominey: It has nothing to do with them, but it is, of course, really their choice to have it all judged by an independent body, which makes these sorts of generous salary increases. MPs are almost in line to move to Dubai.

5:41Tim Stanley: Yes, indeed so. And they would be doing that if they weren't currently having to hide under desks in Dubai.

5:48Camilla Tominey: But Strictly Come Dancing and Angela Rippon turned up to do some dancing in Parliament. Lindsay Hoyle joined in. Did you join in? I didn't. Unfortunately, I missed it. I wish I'd been there. It would have been a wonderful sketch. But I think anyone criticising it is thoroughly miserable. I put Lee Anderson amongst that. What did he say about it? He said, there's a war into the Middle East and there they are dancing.

6:06Tim Stanley: Oh, come on, Lee. You dance in the pub on a Friday night.

6:10Camilla Tominey: I was about to say, he actually interviews politicians in a fake pub. Yes. So the idea that there's no room for levity in politics.

6:16Tim Stanley: I'm not sure it's a fake pub. I think it's a real pub. But he is a fake publican. Let's put it like that.

6:20Camilla Tominey: It's not actually his bar. Come on, cheer up, 30p Lee. Right. But I have a feeling that dancing in the middle of a war is exactly the sort of thing we'd have done during the Blitz.

6:29Tim Stanley: It's the kind of thing that Vera Lynn actively condoned.

6:32Camilla Tominey: Seeing Lindsay Hoyle and Angela Rippon made me proud. proud to be British. Yes. I was then brought crashing down to earth by the Prime Minister at PMQs.

6:42Tim Stanley: Well, indeed. Does he make you proud to be British, too? That's the question we need to answer in this discussion and analysis.

6:48Camilla Tominey: He makes me ashamed to be a man.

6:52Tim Stanley: Now, shall we just preface this conversation by just listening to Donald Trump's latest attack on Keir Starmer?

6:57Camilla Tominey: By the way, I'm not happy with the UK either. This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with?

7:04Tim Stanley: I would have thought, if I was advising the opposition leader, Kemi Badenowk, I would have said, now for goodness sake, there's a massive open goal here where you can accuse this guy across the dispatch box of being Chamberlain. It's perfect. You know, get a piece of paper and wave it in the air if you like. But she didn't actually mention Trump's barb. And I thought that was, I thought she was found wanting a bit today.

7:29Camilla Tominey: But, oh, really? I don't agree. But later on, a Tory MP did make some veiled reference about what the president had said. And Keir Starmer replied, special relationship is working with their armed forces to defend our citizens. It's not hanging on every word of the president. So if Kemi had used that line, he might have had quite a good one in his pocket to use back at her. Before the session began, Lindsay Hall gave a statement in which he pleaded in the way that speakers try to, in the language they use, for MPs to mind their language and to be more polite and to be kinder towards one another.

8:06Camilla Tominey: Well, that's absolutely not what Kemi Baden-Ock did. Let's listen to her talking about the government's defence policies. He stands there telling us that he's spending more money on defence. They're saying it. No, no, he isn't. In fact, they are cutting defence spending by£2.6 billion from the MOD budget this year. And that's why there are no Royal Navy warships in the Middle East, Mr Speaker. Having previously labelled the Labour Party pathetic, she then went up a DEFCON. The truth is that because they spent money on welfare, there is no defence investment plan. Because there is no defence investment plan, they are not ordering enough missiles.

8:50Camilla Tominey: The fact is that this crisis goes beyond defence spending. They can chant as much as they like. They are pathetic. Spending money on welfare instead of defence spending. Sorry, sorry, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, they're not just pathetic.

9:08Tim Stanley: They are also weak. And then Keir Starmer got up before she had finished asking.

9:13Camilla Tominey: He thought Kemi had completed, had finished, and so he stood up and so both of them stood up at the same time and it looked like the beginnings of a pub fight. They can complain all they like, Mr Speaker. The fact is they are letting down the people out. Order, order, order. You can't do a point of order in the middle of Prime Minister's question. Right, Mr Speaker.

9:39That's my question.

9:41Tim Stanley: By the way, my money's massively on Badenock if they were to physically brawl.

9:45Camilla Tominey: Yes.

9:46Tim Stanley: Yes. And she was like, sit back down. I haven't finished. And then she came up with the killer line of the session. Let's listen to that.

9:53Camilla Tominey: Mr Speaker, after last week's by-election, isn't the truth that he is... Isn't the truth... They might not like to hear it, but they are going to hear it, Mr Speaker, whether they like it or not. Is it not the truth that he is prioritising his job security over our national security?

10:18Tim Stanley: So you think she did better than I did because I do think she should have weaponised the Churchill line against him. Because I think it plays well with the public.

10:25Camilla Tominey: I think she dodged a bullet there. But I also felt from this that the debate has moved on a little bit. There was a period, and I was very much of this view, where one could say the Prime Minister had responded correctly to events as they were happening. But we're now in a different world where there just is a war now. And British citizens are now being attacked. And British bases are being targeted. The Prime Minister kept trying to bring things back to the evacuation. Perfectly reasonable thing to do. We do want to hear about that. Kemi didn't seem to be interested.

10:59Tim Stanley: He said more than a thousand people have ended up on planes coming back to the UK in recent hours, which is obviously welcome.

11:05Camilla Tominey: Yeah, but Kemi's point is, what about the defence stuff? What about the actual fighting stuff? And we have a ship, HMS Dragon, which has apparently not even yet, as we speak, left Portsmouth to go to Cyprus. So the conflict has exposed how horribly unprepared Britain is for an overseas conflict.

11:26Tim Stanley: Can I also share one of my observations? Sir Ed Davey, there's collusion. There's collusion on the left. Keir Starmer is so much...

11:38Camilla Tominey: Please make me a coalition partner. Please make me a coalition partner. Please make me a coalition partner.

11:41Tim Stanley: It's so pathetic, isn't it? It's like, you know, when you're choosing teams at school and that person in front, that is Ed Davey. That's so true. I mean, and also, by the way, you wouldn't want him in your sports team. Could I just say? Oh, heavens. Well, hang on, actually, to be fair, the general election, he got practice in being fired out of a cannon, yachting, windsurfing. If there was a sports team responsible for clowning about, obviously you'd want him in it. But what I just find interesting is the tone that Keir Starmer takes with his friend Ed, his little friend on the left, compared to how he treats Badenock.

12:16Tim Stanley: It's poles apart. It's all very, oh, thank you so much for your question. And yes, I'm glad you've raised that. It's just, it's operating in plain sight this, Tim, that's all I'm saying.

12:25Camilla Tominey: And we will brush over that Ed Davey once again labelled everyone currently in the Gulf States a tax exile. Oh, yes. Can I also associate myself with the Prime Minister's remarks on Iran? As we rightly debate how to make tax exiles pay their fair share, it is absolutely right the government does everything it can to get all British citizens to safety. I have to repeat they're not all tax exiles. There are indeed some but there are others just doing jobs young people doing jobs and there are also people on holiday and there are relatives of people who live in the region. It's such a silly and there are dual citizens.

13:04Camilla Tominey: It's such a silly thing to say.

13:05Tim Stanley: Ed Davey doesn't want Brits in Dubai to be given any state funding because they don't pay tax in this country This is the same Ed Davey that's perfectly happy giving taxpayers cash to people arriving here legally or illegally who haven't contributed anything to the system at all. How do you square that circle, Ed? This is the loony nature of the Lib Dems. It doesn't make any logical sense.

13:30Camilla Tominey: But the best question came from Gavin Robinson of the DUP. Mr Speaker, my colleagues and I support our armed forces, but we lament how diminished the UK appears over the last week amongst our allies and within the Middle East. The Prime Minister is not responsible for our armed forces being able to squeeze into Wembley Park and to Ibrox. But he is responsible for our posture. He is responsible for ignoring the request to deploy a Type 45 destroyer two weeks ago into the region. And we now learn that HMS Dragon will not leave, hasn't left and won't be in to defend Cyprus for over a week. Will the Prime Minister understand that I welcome the commitment for increased defence spending, but if we're only planning to get to 2.5 % by 2027, it's not enough.

14:29Camilla Tominey: It needs to be reconsidered. He needs to go faster where others before him did not. And he needs to take these steps, not just for protection of our values across the world, but also for the protection of our consumers who are impacted by this conflict today. Madam Minister. Well, he'd have heard me set out what we did by way of pre-deployment, working in conjunction with and liaising with the US so that he understands the context in which those pre-deployments were put in place. And I think they speak for themselves as to why they were put in place in the places that they were. In relation to defence spend, obviously we're increasing it to 2.6 % of GDP.

15:07Camilla Tominey: That's£270 billion over the Parliament. But as I said in the speech I gave in Munich just a couple of weeks ago, we're going to have to spend more and faster. There is a convention, I don't think the speaker can do anything to control it, that leader of the opposition and the prime minister just tear chunks out of each other now. So to hear someone who the PM by a different convention is forced to listen to and respond to politely lay out the situation like that, I think was really, really powerful.

15:37Tim Stanley: When it comes to defence spending, Tim, shall we speak to somebody who actually crunched the numbers? Because Sir Richard Barron, who joins us next, actually led a government-backed defence review last summer.

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17:38Tim Stanley: Tim, is Britain actually defenceless? We are going to try and demonstrate this. We're going to discuss military personnel as a whole across all armed forces.

17:48Camilla Tominey: Yes, in the air, on the sea, on the land.

17:50Tim Stanley: Indeed, and you have got some little toy soldiers to demonstrate this.

17:53Camilla Tominey: These brave men represent our forces at the end of the Second World War when we had a combined total force of 4.9 million people.

18:05Tim Stanley: We're going to represent that with 100 soldiers on the table here. This is how the armed forces became depleted after 1945. In 1952, it goes down to around 870 ,000. So take them away. There we are. There we go. Then we have the Cold War. We move on to the year 2000, and our forces are then depleted to around 206 ,000.

18:32Camilla Tominey: OK, so I'm going to remove the equivalent of three quarters of the soldiers. So that leaves us with this small but fine body of men here.

18:41Tim Stanley: And then when we come to 2025, that's the last record we have, Tim. We're down to 182 ,000 people serving. Extraordinary. There they go. There we are. You were once an academic and a teacher, so I'm going to hand you the whiteboard. But can I have some appreciation for my own Tony Hart-esque efforts here? Because this is a visual demonstration. we have to also look, of course, at the skies and the seas.

19:05Camilla Tominey: Yes.

19:05Tim Stanley: As you will see there, Dr Stanley, we have 4 ,000...

19:09Camilla Tominey: Not like Carol of Waterman, but yes.

19:10Tim Stanley: Thank you so much. We have 4 ,800 Royal Navy ships in 1945. By 1952, it goes down to several hundred. By 2000, we've got just 100.

19:24Camilla Tominey: Right.

19:25Tim Stanley: And then, in 2025, we've got 63. It's like bingo, but not quite as sexy. And then when we look at RAF aircraft, so as I've put there, in 1945 at its peak, we had 55 ,000 aircraft capable of going to the skies. In 1952, in the post-war period, that goes down to tens of thousands, roughly, Tim. Then in 2000, it goes up because of the Cold War. So we're at 40 ,000 plus. But now in 2025, we have got just 960 aircraft in the RAF. So that is a very sophisticated and not at all crude representation of the depletion of our armed forces over the course of the last 80 years. But the point is, we've just come out of a PMQs where defence spending has been discussed and indeed debated.

20:23Tim Stanley: And we have had this situation, haven't we, with successive governments again making promises that they haven't been able to keep. Arguably because unless we've actually been in conflict, there is no real public appetite is there for taking from the NHS, taking from schools, taking from the benefits bill to pay for defence.

20:44Camilla Tominey: There's also an argument that this is the wrong metric, because what matters is the bang for your buck, not necessarily numbers, but how lethal are your armed forces. So it's plausible, I will be corrected, and if anyone can, it will be Telegraph listeners. It's plausible that each individual soldier can effectively do more damage today than they could have done in 1945. Therefore, we need less of them. And of course, any comparison with 45 is silly anyway, because we were trying to liberate an entire continent and defend an empire, which we no longer have. But the thing about the armed forces is that something that seems useless and expensive during peacetime suddenly becomes really important during war.

21:22Camilla Tominey: And what we've discovered in the last few days is that when our base is attacked at Cyprus, the nearest ship is in Portsmouth.

21:30Tim Stanley: Yes, and indeed we've had to have the French. The French, Tim, let's just think about our own illustrious naval history when it comes to the French. The French sent in an aircraft carrier because we couldn't get to the RAF base in Cyprus in time. And indeed, let's just check the watch now, that carrier is still in pause with it. It's going to take days to arrive. Is this a national humiliation?

21:56Camilla Tominey: It's not just a humiliation. It's silly. It is in the long term going to be a cost. And I would remind you, the Prime Minister says that after peace is finally secured in Ukraine, in about 50 or 100 years' time, he's going to deploy some of that number to Ukraine. So that means it'll be even further stretched. And if they're in Ukraine, they can't defend British assets in Cyprus. We are too overstretched. We need more personnel.

22:20Tim Stanley: Is it right, do you think, for Trump to have accused Keir Starmer of being anti-Chirchillian? I mean, that comment was obviously made, it was made awkwardly to the German Chancellor of all people, Frederick Mertz. OK, so that hurts. We had a succession of barbs, didn't we? We had the interview with our own Connor Stringer, who interviewed him for The Telegraph, saying, I'm disappointed. Then that gravitated to him speaking to Harry Cole of The Sun, laying in even further and saying that the British were too slow to support the US and Israel. And then we get to this moment where he says he isn't Churchill.

22:57Tim Stanley: This isn't Churchill. This is the antithesis of what Churchill would have done. Are these comparisons even valid in 2026?

23:04Camilla Tominey: No. Again, I think the word I would use is silly. It's just it's ahistorical. And we don't know what Winston Churchill would do in similar circumstances. But if we must play such daft games, we might ask, is Donald Trump truly this generation's FDR? Ah, after all, his record on Ukraine does not compare to that of Roosevelt, who supported this country during the first years of the war. Admittedly, at high cost, we were lent and leased equipment. It wasn't just given to us. And also, whenever we talk about the 1940s, it always slightly stings the British, because America took a while to get involved in that one.

23:38Tim Stanley: Well, I know, Pearl Harbor and all that. In that one. Now, a correspondent did get in touch. I will reveal that they are a rival MP from a rival party, but I thought this best summed up what critics are saying about Starmer, and it's as follows. He is in a mess. His backbenchers cheered him, not realising he has, in fact, put us in the line of fire with nothing to show for it and, pardon my French, pissed off the US. I mean, that point that you have now alienated Trump and the so-called special relationship, and I know there are many on the left saying, oh, stop salivating over the special relationship.

24:12Tim Stanley: Whatever you want to call it, the alliance across the Atlantic with America is important. We don't want to find ourselves in the situation that the Spanish are currently in, where there's economic retaliation being threatened because of their lack of support. I also don't think it's great for global standing to have the US president, whatever your opinion of him, introduce our own prime minister in public. Keir Starmer has cocked a lot more flack, maybe apart from the Spanish, than anyone else in Europe. It's not a good look. It's not a good look when five minutes ago he's rustling around on the floor, picking up Donald Trump's papers.

24:49Tim Stanley: And by the way, we rolled the red carpet out for this guy.

24:52Camilla Tominey: Well, and as Kemi Badenok hinted at in PMQs, many, particularly in America, will assume that the prime minister is only not supporting Donald Trump because he wants to keep his party and Muslim constituents happy. So that's a factor. The special relationship is important. I'm against this particular military action, as we've discussed before. But imagine it's the other way around and the Iranians had attacked British assets first in the Middle East, we would want America to instantly say, we have your back and we'll join in in defending you. Well, if we have been slow to join America in this particular fight, it might be that Donald Trump, if the shoe is on the other foot, isn't so quick to rush to our help.

25:34Camilla Tominey: So the special relationship is important partly because of everything we've just been discussing. Our forces are so depleted, we can't go it alone. Unfortunately, we have to somewhat poodle to the United States because we do not have a serious alternative military muscle.

25:49Tim Stanley: So we have this row raging in Parliament about who's spent the most on defence, who has neglected defence spending.

25:55Camilla Tominey: They all have, they all neglected it.

25:56Tim Stanley: And whether or not we can get to this mythical, magical 3 % of GDP.

26:00Camilla Tominey: Yes, and what it will be spent on because Labour's going to spend some of that on road signs in Northumbria. The devil is in the detail with Labour's plans on defence spending.

26:08Tim Stanley: But shall we speak to somebody who actually carried out the defence spending review last year, who does know his onions and does understand the numbers and is going to tell us in just a moment, Tim, that actually we need to be spending billions more. I caught up with him earlier, Tim, while you were watching PMQs from the Press Gallery.

26:31Tim Stanley: Sir Richard Barron, thank you for joining us on The Daily Tea. you're a retired British Army officer and former commander of Joint Forces Command, and you led the government-backed Defence Review last summer. So you certainly know where the numbers now lie. Tim and I have already laid out how our armed forces have been depleted since the Second World War. Maybe it's dishonest, actually, to even make referrals to the Second World War. It's very much in the ether this week, Sir Richard, with Donald Trump suggesting that Keir Starmer hasn't been Churchillian in his response to the strikes on Iran.

27:05Tim Stanley: Is it the case, as many hawks claim, that we are defenceless or certainly much worse defended than we have been in the past?

27:17Camilla Tominey: So it's untrue to say we're defenceless. And when we do spend£67 billion a year on defence, and for that we get an independent nuclear deterrent, It takes up about 20 % of the budget right now. And that's the only nuclear deterrent any European country declares to NATO. France has a nuclear deterrent, but it declares it for France. And with what is left, we get an army, navy and air force, which at the level of quality, at least in the people, are as good as anybody else in the world. But they are really small and they absolutely reflect the journey UK defence travelled from about, frankly, 1989, the end of the Cold War, until today.

28:10Camilla Tominey: And we can understand that because in that period, nobody thought there was an existential peril. You needed big, very ready armed forces to deal with. And instead, the armed forces were focused on what we now call wars of discretion or discretionary interventions, Iraq and Afghanistan, which were of their time and not particularly successful, I think, as you will recall. So we have the armed forces that we decided to have for a different time. And the review of which I was one of the co-leads, in fact, made it very clear that we live in a completely different world. And everything we've seen this week in the Middle East reflects that.

28:53Camilla Tominey: But we should also absolutely not forget that nothing's changed in that war in Ukraine in the last four or five days or so. and the number of casualties that have been inflicted on Iran so far are less than the casualties that occur in Ukraine every single day. So we don't really need any more evidence about this world that we live in and the armed forces that we have from a different time are not a good fit for the world we actually now live in.

29:21Tim Stanley: I think the Ukraine experience is an interesting one because I don't think anyone envisaged a country fighting a land war for years in the vein of World War II and World War I again. There's always been talk about how we need to digitise our armed forces, how we need to make them cyber-competent. So maybe Ukraine has been a giant wake-up call for the world, or am I oversimplifying it, Sir Richard?

29:47Camilla Tominey: So I think that is a bit of an oversimplification because throughout the history of warfare, about every 30 years, and maybe less regularly than that, People come up with the silver bullet. So once we had castles, and then someone turned up with gunpowder and a cannon, and the castle was redundant. And you can see many other examples going through history. And the fact is, there's never been a silver bullet. I don't think there ever will be. And what you see in Ukraine is a battle of wills between Russia and Ukraine for the existence of Ukraine as an independent state. And one of the currencies for that battle of wills is a battle for territory, but it's a lot more than that.

30:31Camilla Tominey: And so if people are going to use aircraft and missiles and artillery, then you're going to have a land war. And then you are going to dig trenches and you're going to go underground as much as possible. And it is going to look like many previous conflicts. But having said all that, this is war in the digital age. And the way that data and AI and drones have changed that war is profound. And some of that reflects the particular situation of Ukraine, that they fight the war they've got with what they've got. But there are some really important messages for the transformation of Western armed forces, which is why in the review we said this is about the most profound transformation of how you think about, build and operate armed forces for 150 years.

31:21Camilla Tominey: That's the digital age changing how you fight.

31:24Tim Stanley: I'm going to ask you about the proposals for transformation in just a moment. but we've ran a headline on The Telegraph, it's got quite a lot of traction online, about the Royal Navy's humiliation of having to send a warship after the French had sent an aircraft carrier to defend our RAF base in Cyprus. We understand that HMS Dragon, I believe it's called, is going to take days to get there. Is it a humiliation for the Royal Navy?

31:53Camilla Tominey: So I wouldn't use the words humiliation. I think what it reflects, as we've talked about, is a Royal Navy that is as small as it is for the reasons that we've described. And if you take this particular piece of equipment, the Type 45 destroyer, the good news is it has world class equipment on it in terms of its radars, its decision making capability and its missiles. and it's being uprated so that unlike anything else in the UK inventory, it can shoot down ballistic missiles, which is frankly one of the reasons it does need to go to the Med right now. And when this project kicked off in around 2000, the plan was to buy 12 and they're about a billion pounds each.

32:36Camilla Tominey: And so in that world of 2000 or so, it was decided you couldn't afford 12, you'd buy eight. And then a little later, they decided to buy six. So the Navy owns six, but it doesn't have the money to operate them, all six, all the time. And it definitely doesn't have the people. So of the six, three right now are in repair, and that's normal. And the Royal Navy probably has enough people. I mean, these are quite complicated machines. They take about 200 people to operate them. It can probably find two ships worth. And one Type 45 is clearly going to be tied to defending the carrier in its primary role, which is in the North Atlantic, as part of NATO deterrence every day.

33:19Camilla Tominey: That's its job. And the review made clear this is NATO first. And then suddenly the Iran war springs up. And in a way, I don't think anyone really foresaw. Iran chooses to expand that war to the region, including the bases in Cyprus. And in that setting, the things that could be got there quickly, aeroplanes, ground-based air defence missiles and counter unmanned aerial system technology, that can be got there quite quickly. But they don't deal with ballistic missiles and no ballistic missiles have been fired at Cyprus yet, but they are being fired in the region. And so a working Type 45, one of the two, will take eight days to get there.

34:01Camilla Tominey: It will take eight days to get there.

34:03Tim Stanley: We've just witnessed a debate, Prime Minister's questions about defence spending, rows between left and right about who's spent enough, who hasn't spent enough, successive governments failing on defence spending. How do we future-proof our armed forces? And in reality, Sir Richard, how much is it going to cost?

34:24Camilla Tominey: So this is, I think, one of the most important questions for government and civil society of our time. And we know where we are, which is we have a public sector of£1.3 trillion in 2026, of which we're going to spend about£67 billion on defence. So we're going to spend more on debt interest, a lot more actually on debt interest. And that outcome reflects the journey we've travelled through that comfortable post-Cold War era where in the 1990s, the Labour government expanded the welfare offer to us all, which we've grown used to. In 2008, the financial crisis made paying for that really hard. And defence has been used as a regulator, so it's got smaller since then, because no one could see why we really needed big armed forces, but we really needed more welfare.

35:20Camilla Tominey: So now we have a stagnant economy, actually for 20 years. And we saw yesterday very little prospect of growth. So on the one hand, people like me make the argument, you've got to spend more money on defence now at scale because of the world we live in. We're running too much risk. And indeed, the review of which I was part of the leadership, we produced a way forward, a narrative. And we had to do that against the financial profile we were given by the government. and we all agreed at the end of it that the narrative is the best in the world. But the path to get there, 10 years or more, is going at least half the speed of the risk.

36:02Camilla Tominey: We should be where we need to be in three to five years. That takes you back to money. And the fact is, if the economy isn't growing and we don't want to pay any tax, we can't really borrow any more, and your public sector is£1.3 trillion, pounds, you can't argue this is a problem of affordability, can you? Because even if you give defence, I would say another 10 billion pounds a year now, and that will really fuel it up and take some of the strain out of people who are just bumping along the bottom with not enough money to do their jobs. Well, 10 billion pounds from 1.3 trillion doesn't sound too hard, does it?

36:39Camilla Tominey: But it actually does mean you are going to take it out of welfare in some way, or you're going to make productivity increases in the delivery of health and welfare. But I think we could find that money. We are simply choosing not to do so. And that's not just the government, which is a Labour government and thinks in a particular way. It's also a civil society argument. I mean, where are, where's the public voice in enough numbers saying, yes, we will accept less welfare for more warfare? It's just not happening here in the way it is happening in other countries in Europe.

37:16Tim Stanley: Just so we're completely clear on the numbers, because I think in today's terms, people are thinking about defence spending as a share of GDP. What should it be? What's the key figure here, in accordance with your review, that could transform our armed services for the future? What figure are you looking for?

37:37Camilla Tominey: So it's a combination of a figure and time. And right now we spend about 2.4 % of GDP on defence and we'll stagger to 2.5 % in 2027. And the target is 3.5 % of GDP plus 1.5 % on defence-related infrastructure from 2035, which is nine years away. And to do what we need to do now, we should be getting to that 3.5 % plus 1.5 % next year.

38:05Tim Stanley: Next year? Next year. So how much is that in actual cash? How many billions are you talking about by next year?

38:12Camilla Tominey: So if we refine that down to the MOD's problem right now, over the next four years, the MOD is thought to be, and I don't know this for sure, thought to be£28 billion short to do what the review said it must do. So I think the figure you're looking for is an extra£10 billion a year to deliver the SCR and do some other important stuff starting now.

38:36Tim Stanley: The other problem, of course, Sir Richard, perhaps, is a lack of appetite among younger people to join the armed forces. Should the answer to this be some kind of major recruitment programme? Total personnel currently serving in the armed forces is 182 ,000. That includes 109 ,000 people serving in the army. That is down from around 5 million in 1945. Post-war in 1952, it went down to 871 ,000. Then in 2000, it was 206 ,000 people. Perhaps we need to have, with youth unemployment at a record high right now, some kind of your country needs you recruitment campaign.

39:24Camilla Tominey: So I think I'm right in saying all the service chiefs, the heads of the Army and Navy Air Force, would report that applications are way up. Are they? And that's because, yes, because the youngsters, and they'll generally be 16 to 24. So they can see the imperative is changing. And the interest on the doorstep reported by all political parties in defence is way up. It's about 30 % or 40 % now as an issue. So that world is changing. And the problem for the armed forces is they need to get bigger and they need more people to do the things they're being asked to do. But that means not just finding the people, but they have to have the equipment and the accommodation and the training and the engineering support to make that real.

40:11Camilla Tominey: So, for example, the Navy could do with more people now, and it takes some years to be really competent in many of their disciplines, but they're not going to have any more ships than are already in the program. So there are probably three parts of an answer to this question. The first is, yes, the regular forces need to get bigger. And let's face it, if the army does have to play a role in some sort of settlement in Ukraine, and that role lasts for many years, you can't simply dismantle what the army does for NATO in order to do something in Ukraine. You're going to have to make the army bigger.

40:47Camilla Tominey: But that's an unpalatable question right now, because the money to do that is absolutely not on the table. So we need more regular people. The second thing the armed forces need is a much bigger reserve. and that's either people who have served in the regular forces being brought back in and the arrangements of that are coming but also a bigger volunteer reserve and the review calls for an increase in that and the armed forces bill going through parliament now will help that but I think it's just a start and the second thing is about this transformation point so to produce mass and endurance in the armed forces you would conventionally think about well let's have more ships, tanks, aircraft and people on them But as we're seeing playing out today in Ukraine and in the Middle East, armed forces are becoming a different mix of people manning ships, tanks, aircraft, but also drones, which are unmanned and flown from somewhere else generally, and increasingly autonomous platforms, land, sea and air.

41:44Camilla Tominey: So one of the great opportunities for the UK is, yes, you need more people, but also you need more machines. And those machines will create a different sort of operational effectiveness. And if the UK does it as well as they could, and that does require more money sooner, then it will make things other countries will want to buy. So I do get that there is a link between more defence spending on transformation and export-led growth. And the UK is one of the few countries capable of doing that really well.

42:16Tim Stanley: Very clear. Thank you very much indeed, Sir Richard Barron, for joining us on The Daily Tea today.

42:21Camilla Tominey: Thank you. That was really interesting, him saying that far from the young not wanting to serve, they're trying to sign up faster than we can process them. Yeah, I thought of that. And I have seen complaints online about the armed forces procedure being ridiculously complex and very stringent and people who really could serve being turned away, that they're actually being too picky. Yes.

42:42Tim Stanley: Also, I think they drafted in external contractors. It used to be that the army and other forces recruited for themselves. Then they did that thing of getting in HR people.

42:51Camilla Tominey: Sergeant Major making you do 30 push-ups in a minute. Exactly.

42:54Tim Stanley: We need people in uniform deciding who should serve and who shouldn't serve. So I think that's changed the complexion of things. But this whole narrative around old Generation Z and Alpha, they don't have the metal, they don't have the muscle, they don't have the will.

43:08Camilla Tominey: But older people who say things like that are really talking about themselves.

43:12Tim Stanley: Bring back national service.

43:13Camilla Tominey: That's our generation. You know, we are the ones who couldn't be bothered to serve. It's perfectly possible. Well, we weren't really asked to serve. We weren't really asked, no. We were kind of between wars. If they had asked, would I have done so or would I have hidden under the stairs in a cupboard? I don't know.

43:26Tim Stanley: Well, what would you have done? I would be there, as you can imagine, with bells on. I literally would be like Linda Hamilton in The Terminator. Yes. OK.

43:35Camilla Tominey: Like an Amazon woman.

43:36Tim Stanley: Like literally pump action shotguns in both hands. I'm going in. I would love to be on that SAS celebrity whatever or be on some kind of manhunt across the UK being chased by Peter Blexley. I'm just getting so excited. Like give me a 40 pound rucksack and I'm going in.

43:55Camilla Tominey: Yes.

43:55Tim Stanley: But nobody ever asked me to sign up. So instead I went into journalism. But if given the opportunity. But yes.

44:02Camilla Tominey: But journalists do see some horrible things and journalists are often very brave people.

44:06Tim Stanley: I'm not sure there's anything particularly brave. I haven't been a Mary Colvin figure. Instead, I've stood behind a rope rather than like a war zone battle line. Do you know what I mean?

44:17Camilla Tominey: Well, you've thrown some very explosive questions at Royals.

44:21Tim Stanley: At Royals. I've written some really incisive copy about Kate's high heels.

44:26Camilla Tominey: But I do just want to say, because I have been critical of this particular operation, therefore the epithet, weak, has been used a great deal for me.

44:34Tim Stanley: Oh, yeah, weak.

44:34Camilla Tominey: I do want to put it on the record.

44:36Tim Stanley: Effing wetty, I think it was.

44:38Camilla Tominey: I do want to put on record that one reason why I am so hesitant to go to war is because I have been to war zones as a journalist and I have seen the extraordinary destruction that it does and I've met people who've lost their relatives and who have been horribly injured. And once you have seen it in the flesh and in the rubble, you wouldn't wish it on anyone.

44:57Tim Stanley: Tim Stanley, you're a lover, not a fighter, and I admire that in you. We shall be back with more Fighting Talk tomorrow, 5pm. Thank you.