Following Tuesday evening’s Edward Heath Lecture in Salisbury by very fed up Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, it was not astonishing that Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex, Conservative) LoTO focused all six of her questions on Defence Spending. LoTO rose at 12:03:05 and asked:
- Why did Lord Robertson accuse the Prime Minister of “corrosive complacency”?
- Would the PM publish the Defence Investment Plan before the end of the Parliamentary session in two weeks’ time?
- What is the Government’s hold-up in the publication of the Defence Investment Plan?
Mr Speaker intervened in apparent embarrassment to cut off Sir Keir’s third avoidance of these successive questions with lengthy, boring and rehearsed attacks on LoTO’s position saying:
“Prime Minister, it’s Prime Minister’s Questions. You’ve got to concentrate.”
It was quite the moment. The PM looked as though he was coming close to being “slightly peeved.” One detected what may have amounted to a rather unsympathetic eye-roll from Douglas Alexander (Paisley & Renfrewshire South, Labour) Scottish Secretary, who had drawn the short straw of sitting beside the poltroon of prevarication having answered Scottish oral questions immediately before PMQs. Mrs Badenoch returned to her theme, asking
- Would the PM work with the Opposition to find savings to fund defence?
- Would the PM put the billions saved from ditching the Chagos deal into defence?
- Would the PM immediately approve and fund the Type 45 Destroyer ballistic missile interception upgrade he paused in July?
The PM finished “answering” LoTO’s questions at 12:13:45.
However, answers were there not a single one. The nation had lost 10m 40s of its life and sanity. Sir Keir has not “got” PMQs even now and each week makes it ever clearer that he is not suited to thinking on his feet or presenting a case. Considering his background, this is surprising and disappointing. This is made even worse because “the” answer to LoTO’s questions easily could have been something along the lines of “we are having trouble working out where the money should come from to pay for increasing defence sending without raiding welfare, education or health while keeping to the Chancellor’s own spending rules.” Everyone knows this to be the situation. Why does it help anyone not to just simply state that this is the problem. Instead the can is kicked at an odd angle further down an endless corridor of evasion. Political capital is squandered for no gain. HMG looks weaker with every obvious evasion.
Tuesday 14th April
Tuesday was a quieter day in the Chamber after the “excitements” of Monday’s first day back, but there was some objections to new moves to restrict the right to protest repeatedly in the same area (in reaction to Palestine Action marches) introduced via an amendment in the other chamber in the juggernaut Crime & Policing Bill.
This was most argued as a Point of Order by Andy McDonald (Middlesborough & Thornaby East, Labour) who complained that the consideration of this amendment via the consideration of “bundled” Lords amendments
was a shabby procedural trick designed, ironically, to reduce protest.
A point of principle cogently argued by a backbencher with sincerity and directness.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North, Labour) SoS Health took an hour of oral Health questions on Tuesday morning and, en passant, called out the BMA Junior Doctors’ Committee’s “reckless” and “cavalier” rejection of the Government’s pay and training offer. In answer to questions from, amongst others, one of his predecessors as Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt (Godalming & Ash, Conservative), Mr Streeting seemed to remain confident that sending in “crack teams” of clinicians is the best way forward. Not to expand a medical metaphor beyond its limits, this does seem to be placing a sticking plaster on an amputation which really requires more a more serious systematic solutions. Roving teams of crack clinicians do not seem like a sustainable answer to poor local performance.
Monday 13th April
Back to school work can be a time for renewed energies to be brought to bear on old problems. Although there was some catching up for the House to do, governmental “energy” does not seem to have been renewed by MPs’ two-week break.
Prime Ministerial Statement on the Middle East
Sir Keir (Holborn & St Pancras, Labour) arrived in the Chamber about half an hour after the USA had apparently started its naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in response to the failure of the #IslamabadTalks. This seemed to rather upstage Sir Keir’s report on his three-day trip to the Gulf, where he had met MBS, the President of the UAE, the King of Bahrain and the Emir of Qatar, but seems to have achieved very little.
However, the PM was able to confirm that an Anglo-French Summit to be held in Paris on Friday would develop military plans to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz (with the important caveat that such plans could only progress if the ceasefire was made permanent.)
Nevertheless, the political “nub” of the PM’s statement was the decision to use the Iran War as cover for his long-desired plan to accelerate the UK’s economic rapprochement with the EU.
It is interesting that this new EU strategy took top billing over energy security, although the PM did say: “We will go further and faster on our mission to make Britain energy independent” which caused much Miliband nodding.
However, there was not a glimmer of a justification for refusing to encourage new North Sea oil and gas production to ensure that independence in the short term.
Kemi Badenoch (NW Essex, Conservative) LoTO, agreed with all of Starmer’s platitudes, but moved immediately to suggest that “We must start drilling our own oil and gas in the North Sea, grant licences for drilling in the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields and restore British production before it is too late.”
New production in Rosebank (300-500m barrels of oil reserves could produce 70,000 barrels per day) and Jackdaw (200-250m barrel equivalent of gas could produce 40,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day) could significantly reduce the need for the UK to import oil and gas from Norway and the USA, while the shift towards renewables continues. Sadly, this “dual-fuel” bootstrap seems to be an intellectual jump too far for the current Cabinet to understand the need for. After his Gulf jaunt, perhaps a quick trip to Oslo for the itinerant PM?
Kemi pivoted to the argument that this domestic energy production increase was a baseline for securing UK defence and asking for the Government to produce the elusive Defence Investment Plan meant to define the funding of the increase in UK defence spending inherent in Lord Robertson’s Strategic Defence Review published on 2nd June 2025. “Let’s get serious!”
Trails of Lord Robertson’s 2026 Edward Heath lecture “Can Britain be Defended?” suggested that at least one very frustrated former Secretary-General of NATO and Labour Defence Secretary now feels that the Prime Minister is simply displaying procrastination and avoidance on the future defence spending.
Harry Farley & Henry Zeffman, BBC News, 14th April 2026 “Former Nato chief warns UK’s national security ‘in peril’.”
It is worth noting that Lord Robertson’s Strategic Defence Review was published in June 2025. He is clearly hopping mad.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South & Penarth, Labour) MoS F&CDO, came to the Chamber at 6:18pm to announce that, because of the failure of the completion of an “exchange of notes” with the USA, the bill to implement the treaty with Mauritius to transfer control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, stuck in the Lords since January; would not now progress.
Sir Bernard “Plank”Jenkin (North Essex, Conservative) sullied the reputation of Monty Python by drawing the all-too-obvious comparison of the Chagos deal to a very dead parrot.
As if to highlight the need for increasing defence spending, Alan Carns (Birmingham Selly Oak, Labour) PU-S Defence came to the Chamber at 7pm to announce further details of the Russian operation “to survey pipelines and cables during peacetime and then potentially if required, sabotage, in conflict.”
Thank you for reading and please check out our instagram @theworldofukpolitics,
Alex
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