One of the key rites of passage for all modern prime ministers is losing their temper a little during an exchange with Bernard Jenkin at the liaison committee. It happened to David Cameron, who would go rather pink and say ‘the thing is, BERNARD’ while trying to explain why he hadn’t implemented Jenkin’s committee’s plan on civil service reform. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak had similar run-ins with the veteran Tory MP. Today, though, Keir Starmer lost his cool even more than the others had previously – and it was on a very telling topic.

Jenkin wanted to know why Britain was ‘not on a war footing’ and where the much-delayed defence investment plan was. Starmer told him that ‘we are finalising the investment plan’, and was accused of........

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