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06-07-2026
LONDON: Andy Burnham will have to find an additional 4.7 billion pounds ($6.2bn) to close a defence funding gap if, as is widely expected, he becomes the United Kingdom’s prime minister later this month.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Tuesday announced a long-delayed defence plan aimed at making the UK’s depleted armed forces war-ready amid rising security threats and warnings that Russia could attack a NATO member as soon as 2030.
However, the plan’s commitment to spend an additional 15 billion pounds ($19.9bn) came under scrutiny within hours of its release after accompanying documents showed that almost a third of the funding still needed to be found in a budget later this year. Burnham only found out about the funding hole on the day it was published, Minister of Defence Procurement Luke Pollard said on Wednesday.
“It’s not unusual for governments to make announcements saying this is what we’ll spend, and then to complete the details of that at the next budget,” Pollard told Sky News. Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis is facing questions over the funding gap and whether Burnham was blindsided by the need to plug it in his first budget.
Jarvis sidestepped repeated questions about whether it had been made clear to Burnham that he was being left with a funding gap.
“Of course, we’ve been talking to Andy Burnham and his team about this plan,” Jarvis told media Newsnight, pointing to Starmer’s focus on a “smooth transition” of power. Burnham is widely expected to become the UK’s prime minister later in July.
“I know that if Andy Burnham becomes the prime minister … that he will take national security as seriously as Keir has taken it,” Pollard said.
He later declined to answer questions on when Burnham had been told of the financial details, saying, “I’m not involved with those conversations”.
Opposition politicians and former military chiefs also criticized the defence investment plan for failing to set out when defence spending would reach 3 percent of GDP, on the way to meeting the UK’s NATO commitment to spend 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035.
Starmer defended the costings on Tuesday, saying much of the additional funding would come from reallocating spending from other government departments.
Earlier, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has cruised to victory in a high-stakes by-election in northern England, paving the way for him to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party and the United Kingdom.
Burnham handily defeated his closest challenger, Robert Kenyon, the candidate for the anti-immigration Reform UK, in the seat of Makerfield, vote results showed early on Friday, securing the House of Commons seat he needs to mount a bid for the prime ministership.
Burnham won 24,927 votes, beating Kenyon by more than 9,000 votes.
Rebecca Shepherd of Restore Britain was a distant third, trailed by Michael Winstanley of the Conservative Party, Sarah Wakefield of the Green Party, and the Liberal Democrats’ Jake Austin.
“Everyone knows that politics is not working,” Burnham said in his victory speech.
“Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could just could be the turning point. From here on, I will give everything that I have got to make it so, to ensure the name Makerfield is forever synonymous with bringing about the change this country needs.”
US President Donald Trump has made his first comment on the UK’s likely next leader describing Andy Burnham as ‘extremely liberal’. He also declared that Britain is ‘dying’ and urged greater oil drilling in the North Sea. The comments came after Keir Starmer announced plans to step down, with Burnham the only candidate to succeed him. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
