Kemi Badenoch attacked Andy Burnham on defence spending again for the second Prime Minister’s Questions where the pair faced each other. This time, she had the new PM on the ropes. Burnham struggled with her repeated questions on how he would fund defence spending so that it will reach 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 – or indeed whether it will reach 3 per cent by 2030. He ended up spending more time explaining why her proposals for welfare cuts wouldn’t work than he did answering the question of how he would fund defence, leading Badenoch and those watching to conclude that he didn’t really know.

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Badenoch opened by saying that after last week’s session, it wasn’t clear if Burnham would or would not raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030. She asked whether John Healey was right to have resigned as defence secretary from Keir Starmer’s government over the matter. Burnham gave a similar answer to the one he offered last week: he’d appointed Healey because of his commitment, and that the government was serious about reaching its commitment for 2035 – thus dodging the point about the 2030 target.

The Tory leader then........

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