Oct 14, 2026 · 16 min · 7 segments
On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at whether the UK really should commit to an arbitrary 3.5% target for defence spending (0:39), the IMF’s world economic outlook report and what’s missing…
Our first story this week looks at a brilliant and timely report from Kevin Cashman and Kem Rogali at the Transition Security Project that shreds the ridiculous non-debates we've been forced into over defence spending.
Under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, if anyone remembers him, the UK signed up to NATO's 3.5% of GDP defence spending target in June 2025.
Since then, debate in this country has been dominated almost entirely by a fixation on achieving this absurdly round number in as quick a time as possible, with Starmer indicating it would be met by 2035.
He then backed off from this and was in turn met by the resignation of his Defence Secretary, John Healey, which presaged Starmer's own departure from office and indeed Parliament itself.
Healey has now returned to the Cabinet as Chancellor under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham and is making pre-budget murmurings that in fact meeting this target, which implies a £279bn increase in defence spending over the next decade, might in fact not be achieved by that magic date.
One side of this ongoing non-debate has lined up to demand cuts to welfare to pay for defence, led in this case by the Tories, but with some noises off from Labour figures such as Wes Streeting and Lord Robertson, both of whom suggested welfare cuts might be needed.
The other side has a notionally more left variant of the argument that has suggested tax rises, like Resolution Foundation's call for higher rates on middle earners.
The whole thing would be farcical, the equivalent of Jonathan Swift's Big Enders and Little Enders, who, on the island of Lilliput, would debate interminably whether it was better to eat eggs from the Big End or the Little End first.
Or it would be farcical if, for example, it wasn't leading to attempts to rinse yet more military spending out of what little support has been offered for domestic climate measures, like home heat pumps floated in the latest pre-budget leak, or threatening, as the Tories do, further rounds of welfare spending cuts.
It's not as if Vladimir Putin is sitting in the Kremlin and if, by 1 January 2035, he spots the United Kingdom is spending only 3.499% of GDP on its military, then he'll give the order to fire up the engines and send the tanks careering through the Suvalki Gap.
That much should be obvious, and yet somehow the basis of the number is never questioned, a queasy consensus appearing that whatever level of spending we now have is clearly not enough.
This has been backed, now over many months, by what I have to describe as a drumbeat of stories speculating about the imminence of war with Russia – now including a slightly ridiculous Sky series in which assorted ex-politicians get to play let's pretend about being in the cabinet when Russia, for reasons obscure, decides to attack the UK.
One version of them is the massive hack of French supermarkets, which saw refrigerators switched off and millions of euros of food spoiled.
Another version are the catastrophic risks built into climate change or natural systems collapse, as the government's own previously censored National Security Advisers report warns.
Neither of these will be particularly addressed by ramping up spending on conventional military means, including, for that matter, the enormous sums we devote to maintain aid nuclear weapons capability.
What Kem and Kevin do very systematically is something that has sometimes been lacking in approaching military issues.
In other words, not spending related to the defence of the United Kingdom, but spending related to being able to send our army or navy or air force elsewhere in the world.
This has enormous costs, and I quote from the report, Britain has spent more than £51 billion on its participation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as related military operations in West Asia and North Africa since 2001.
Our first story this week looks at a brilliant and timely report from Kevin Cashman and Kem Rogali at the Transition Security Project that shreds the ridiculous non-debates we've been forced into over defence spending.
Under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, if anyone remembers him, the UK signed up to NATO's 3.5% of GDP defence spending target in June 2025.
Since then, debate in this country has been dominated almost entirely by a fixation on achieving this absurdly round number in as quick a time as possible, with Starmer indicating it would be met by 2035.
He then backed off from this and was in turn met by the resignation of his Defence Secretary, John Healey, which presaged Starmer's own departure from office and indeed Parliament itself.
Healey has now returned to the Cabinet as Chancellor under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham and is making pre-budget murmurings that in fact meeting this target, which implies a £279bn increase in defence spending over the next decade, might in fact not be achieved by that magic date.
One side of this ongoing non-debate has lined up to demand cuts to welfare to pay for defence, led in this case by the Tories, but with some noises off from Labour figures such as Wes Streeting and Lord Robertson, both of whom suggested welfare cuts might be needed.
The other side has a notionally more left variant of the argument that has suggested tax rises, like Resolution Foundation's call for higher rates on middle earners.
The whole thing would be farcical, the equivalent of Jonathan Swift's Big Enders and Little Enders, who, on the island of Lilliput, would debate interminably whether it was better to eat eggs from the Big End or the Little End first.
Or it would be farcical if, for example, it wasn't leading to attempts to rinse yet more military spending out of what little support has been offered for domestic climate measures, like home heat pumps floated in the latest pre-budget leak, or threatening, as the Tories do, further rounds of welfare spending cuts.
It's not as if Vladimir Putin is sitting in the Kremlin and if, by 1 January 2035, he spots the United Kingdom is spending only 3.499% of GDP on its military, then he'll give the order to fire up the engines and send the tanks careering through the Suvalki Gap.
That much should be obvious, and yet somehow the basis of the number is never questioned, a queasy consensus appearing that whatever level of spending we now have is clearly not enough.
This has been backed, now over many months, by what I have to describe as a drumbeat of stories speculating about the imminence of war with Russia – now including a slightly ridiculous Sky series in which assorted ex-politicians get to play let's pretend about being in the cabinet when Russia, for reasons obscure, decides to attack the UK.
One version of them is the massive hack of French supermarkets, which saw refrigerators switched off and millions of euros of food spoiled.
Another version are the catastrophic risks built into climate change or natural systems collapse, as the government's own previously censored National Security Advisers report warns.
Neither of these will be particularly addressed by ramping up spending on conventional military means, including, for that matter, the enormous sums we devote to maintain aid nuclear weapons capability.
What Kem and Kevin do very systematically is something that has sometimes been lacking in approaching military issues.
In other words, not spending related to the defence of the United Kingdom, but spending related to being able to send our army or navy or air force elsewhere in the world.
This has enormous costs, and I quote from the report, Britain has spent more than £51 billion on its participation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as related military operations in West Asia and North Africa since 2001.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.