Burnham left with £4.7bn bill for Starmer’s new defence investment plan

Andy Burnham will have to find an extra £4.7bn for defence in his first budget, after Keir Starmer announced a £298bn defence investment plan (Dip) without having fully identified how it will be funded. Sources close to the Makerfield MP said he would not try to renegotiate the Dip after the outgoing prime minister announced its details at a press conference on Tuesday. Those close to the likely next prime minister acknowledged he would have to find nearly £5bn more than expected to fund the plans over the next four years, which one Burnham ally likened to an “unexploded bomb”. The Guardian understands the Makerfield MP was not told about the funding gap when he was briefed on the plan. A defence insider said it was “madness after all that wrangling to have left a £4.7bn black hole for someone else to fix”, while the Conservatives described the plan as a “delayed-action poison pill” for Burnham. Starmer said on Tuesday the long-delayed Dip would make Britain safer by “driving a generational transformation of our armed forces”. Overall defence spending will rise marginally from 2.6% of GDP in 2027 to 2.7%, or nearly £80bn, by 2030. Starmer said that would put the UK “on a trajectory” to hit 3% in the next parliament, although it remains well below a Nato target of 3.5% by 2035. …