Former Nato chief says UK is not safe - but why? — BBC Newscast

[0:00] welcome back chris mason hello hello are you rested after your easter break i think i'm supposed to [0:05] say i'm recharged and ready to go no but i am actually i had a nice break it was all good uh [0:10] and uh you know the winter election campaigns and all of that there's no shortage of news about [0:15] well your first gig i noticed was the scottish leaders debate yeah paisley town hall on sunday [0:21] evening fascinating six-way debate there's another one to come in wales that'll be six [0:25] way as well in a couple of a couple of weeks time and all the debates going on in england too so yeah [0:30] you can't beat election campaigns and yes there's more than there's more than one this time and also [0:35] yeah back to another old chestnut which is a row about defense spending yeah and and you know one [0:42] that we're familiar with aren't we because there's a wider conversation going on and has been for some [0:46] time at westminster amongst plenty of political parties around you know how do we have a societal [0:52] conversation about the prospect of increasing defense spending and then with what trade-offs [0:59] with what trade-offs for taxes with what trade-offs for other uh spending that's been going on for a [1:05] while not least because of the context of the ukraine war and then sharpened i think in the [1:09] context of the conflict in iran because of the economic consequences that it has in the short to [1:15] medium term that we'll come on to discuss but then the questions that it raises again and have been raised [1:21] again uh today uh by lord robertson the former labor defense secretary the former secretary general [1:28] of nato saying that he thinks the government is complacent so and you know that is a sharpening of [1:34] that argument isn't it and it's and i guess it's then harder for governments to make an argument about [1:38] spending more but frankly on anything but on defense when the economy is struggling and has been [1:43] for some time and with indications today that the war is going to make things harder still well chris [1:49] keep your powder dry on that issue because we're going to be digging into it in depth in this episode [1:54] of newscast but before we do that we're going to unveil our new edition of our opening titles and as [2:00] is traditional chris you have to work out how many people are are in it okay take it away newscast [2:10] newscast from the bbc humanity's next great voyage begins we are in the midst of a rupture nostalgia will [2:17] not bring back the old order six seven yeah it's supposed to be me as a doctor daddy has has also a [2:24] special connotation thinking about it like a panto helped do we play music now or what do we do right [2:33] so i think we've got so i got this there was the guy from nasa number one i think it was mark carney [2:40] the canadian prime minister number two number three i didn't quite catch number four i think was keir starmer [2:44] number five was donald trump and then i missed one or two then there was kemi badenock and then [2:49] there was nigel farage so one two three four five six seven i'm gonna say nine with a nine in total [2:56] oh i actually haven't kept track of how many there are but you didn't get them all which means there [3:00] were a few spots for newscast listeners to guess and if you can identify the voices that chris did not [3:06] then you can let us know newscast at bbc.co.uk or you can whatsapp us on zero three three zero one two [3:12] three nine four eight zero and see if you can beat chris mason which i'm sure you can um right should [3:20] we get on with today's episode yes right well help us to unpick this big story about defense spending [3:25] we're joined by ben chu who's policy and analysis correspondent at bbc verify hello ben hello adam i [3:31] always just thought of you as ben from bbc verify i didn't realize there were so many well you can call [3:34] me whatever you like policy analysis is pretty good uh and also helen miller who's director of [3:40] the institute for fiscal studies is here hello again helen hello right um chris before we dig into [3:45] the sort of the details of the argument around defense spending why is everyone talking about [3:50] it today tuesday the 14th of april because uh lord robertson george robertson former labor defense [3:56] secretary a couple of decades back and former secretary general of nato in fact he was nato secretary [4:02] general at the uh time of 9 11 so was the secretary general at the one time uh that nato has triggered [4:09] triggered article 5 that central element of nato that um if one uh member is attacked it's a [4:15] acceptance that it is an attack on all and they come to the defense of the country that it is attacked [4:20] which of course was america in 2001. he is giving a lecture now as we record at just gone 6 30 on [4:27] uh tuesday evening he is giving a lecture very shortly so we haven't yet heard it but we are aware [4:33] of the key things he is saying and he is saying in this lecture that the iran war is a rude wake-up call [4:42] he says the uk is underprepared underinsured and we are under attack he says national security and safety [4:49] is in peril and he accuses political leaders of corrosive complacency and the more recent back story [4:57] to this is that he was in the thick of a um of a review done for the government completed last summer [5:06] about our defense uh he's kept his powder dry publicly uh since then the government promised off [5:13] the back of that review that it would come forward with a defense investment plan by the [5:18] autumn of last year that's not yet seen the light of day prime minister says it's on his desk [5:23] government says it's going to come soon soon can be quite an elastic concept in uh in politics um and [5:30] he's decided lord robertson clearly that he's he's sufficiently frustrated that he wants to sort of [5:35] break cover talk publicly set out his concerns um and that's what he's doing in this um in the speech [5:43] the government's making an argument as it has for some time that it's putting up uh defense uh spending [5:49] but then you know here we go into the context yes of the war in iran at the moment the wider context [5:55] around western security war in ukraine etc um and then how this government and indeed its successors [6:03] wrestle with the geopolitical landscape and the pressures that that puts on them to increase defense [6:09] spending at what cost to other things and chris just to be really clear lord robertson's criticisms [6:14] could probably be leveled at lots of governments from the recent past but actually the real political [6:19] potency in his attack is that he's attacking the current government the people who signed him up to [6:24] do this defense review last year yeah i mean he this is a guy who's been you know labored to his bones [6:30] for decades and decades and decades he is somebody who has impeccable defense credentials not just on [6:35] the domestic stage as a former defense secretary but secretary general of nato of all things uh you [6:41] know perhaps one of the uh the most uh grand titles in the world of western defense you could possibly [6:48] aspire to have uh on your cv he's also somebody who doesn't make a habit of shooting his mouth off [6:54] quite quietly spoken in his in his manner and his demeanor doesn't race in front of the cameras and [6:59] microphones very often in fact it's been quite the persuasion job as we await to hear this speech uh [7:06] this evening as we record to even get a camera in the room to record what he's saying so that just [7:12] gives you sort of some sense around uh around him as a him as a figure in defense but also him as a [7:18] as a character and clearly given his party affiliation it is a sharper critique for this [7:24] government to absorb than it would if it came from somebody who who you know a government could could [7:30] label as a partisan critic an instinctive partisan critic from across the political divide and ben give [7:35] us some some numbers about defense spending that can kind of help us understand this argument sure [7:41] well okay look i looked at today at the nato official estimate of what the uk is spending on [7:47] defense and that's the more relevant measure because obviously the nato target which the [7:50] government has set itself the uk's figures are slightly below but going on the nato's on nato's [7:55] figures in 2025 it estimates that the uk would be spending about 70 billion pounds on qualifying [8:03] defense spending which is about 2.4 percent of gdp and for context the government set a target [8:10] to get that up to 2.5 percent by 20 27 and to do that it's had to cut well it's it chose to cut the [8:20] foreign aid budget by about 0.2 percent of gdp so it's basically as a result that decision is spending [8:27] in today's money about another six billion pounds on defense to get to that 2.5 percent target and it has a [8:35] target to get to three percent by the end of the next parliament although there's a lot of pressure [8:41] for the government to do that by the end of this parliament put that in context that would require [8:45] another roughly 15 billion pounds extra on top of that six billion pounds already spent so you're [8:52] getting into considerable uh figures there in terms of the extra spending to be uh that would be needed [8:57] to hit those those targets also helen it's worth remembering that that percentage of gdp thing is not [9:03] a percentage of all the money the government spends in its total budget it's a percentage [9:08] of the whole economy as so it's a sort of funny kind of yardstick compared to how we measure public [9:14] spending in lots of other areas it is funny and it's important if all the income we create so it's [9:18] saying you know two and a half percent roughly of every pound creating the economy in a year will go [9:23] on defense spending possibly more if they reach their targets you know it is a big chunk already of [9:28] what the government does and it's worth panning out a bit further in the context here i think you know [9:33] for year for decades we were the uk was cutting defense spending you know post cold war it was [9:38] getting in some sense cutting relative to the size of the economy while welfare and health were [9:43] increasing we're now at historically unusual position of trying to increase health you know [9:49] welfare spending and ramping up defense we've never done that before so it's also that broader context [9:53] here of um things are different in the broader world we are trying to have a bigger welfare state [9:57] a bigger health spending older population and now we're trying to increase defense and that's very [10:02] unusual and the sort of the equation george robertson appears to be making in this speech [10:07] and certainly he's quoted in the financial times this morning is making this equation is that you [10:11] have to cut welfare spending so you can put defense spending up is that a fair way of of looking at the [10:18] balance i think it's true to say you have to find a way to pay for welfare spending it is as ben said [10:24] there are sufficiently big sums here this isn't the money you find in the back of the sofa if you really [10:28] want to meaningfully increase defense spending um on a permanent basis not just for the next year [10:32] you got to fund it now you either got to fund it by higher taxes that would be significant so if you [10:38] want to find an extra 15 billion looking at one or two percentage points on the rate of vat for example [10:43] or you cut other spending now you could cut welfare um which could mean you know benefits for working [10:48] age people pensioners it could mean health you know the broader healthcare system you wouldn't have to [10:53] have to look there but importantly we spend so much money on health and welfare if you don't want to [10:59] touch those areas and you want to cut elsewhere then you've really got to go pretty big cuts to find [11:04] that money so we really do have choices we don't have to do anything in a sense um but the scale of [11:10] the numbers here is such that we shouldn't think there's an easy way through this you have to make [11:13] some real prioritization about where you're going to how much you're going to raise and where you're [11:17] going to put it and just to put some numbers on that welfare point because we were asked to look [11:21] into it for verify today and looking purely at the working age welfare bill so not including the [11:26] state pension which i think is probably a more relevant comparator to the point that george [11:30] robertson lord robertson was making in the mid 1980s the government was spending more on defense [11:36] than working age welfare at the and as of today it's spending more on working age welfare than defense [11:42] about uh just under four percent of gdp and that's projected to go up to four point three percent so [11:47] you're comparing that with 2.3 2.5 percent of gdp so that gives you a sense of the amount of [11:53] resources which are going to these two areas and obviously many people say that the defense the uh [11:59] the welfare one should come down and the defense should go up or the bit there's lots of pressure [12:03] on the government to keep spending on both and also chris it sounds like there's actually sort of two [12:07] arguments about defense spending going on here there's the george robertson lord robertson view about [12:12] what you do in the medium to long term to create um a modern armed forces that can survive in and [12:20] thrive in the scary world we find ourselves in but it also sounds like there's an argument going on [12:24] about just sort of paying the the immediate bills in the ministry of defense as well yes and there's [12:30] been noises from the uh mod today kind of articulating that now some will say that you know [12:38] government departments will often make noises known like these because they face a squeeze [12:43] and they argue that their cause is greater when it comes to public spending than perhaps the department [12:49] down the road that's often the sort of tangle of conversation that goes on between and within [12:54] uh government departments and i think the other thing you've got going on here is the big picture [12:59] thing which is the kind of generational challenge or the challenge of the coming years and then the more [13:04] specific thing which is when does the government get round to publishing um this defense investment [13:12] plan that i mentioned that was promised not long after the publication of the strategic defense review [13:17] which will set out how it would be paid for and actually as you were just in conversation there i [13:23] spotted uh on my laptop some remarks from luke pollard who is the defense procurement minister who has [13:30] popped up in front of the cameras in response in anticipation of uh lord robertson um imminently [13:37] saying the government's working flat out he says to publish this uh uh defense uh investment uh plan [13:43] and uh we're sort of pushing back on the idea that the reason it hasn't seen the light of day is because [13:47] they can't decide where the money's going to come from saying we've already had we already have extra [13:51] money in our budget this year uh due to what the chancellor was saying um in the um uh in the budget so [13:58] you know you've got the the sort of micro and the sort of practicalities of delivering what lord [14:02] robertson and uh those who wrote the um who wrote the defense review were saying a year ago and then [14:10] that that sort of medium term question as well as as you say that the shorter term wrangles within [14:15] the mod about the budgets that they're facing right now and helen that shorter term wrangle that seems [14:19] to boil down to a number that have been people have been banding around of 28 billion pounds over the [14:24] next four years just explain where that numbers come from and if that's a sort of legit number [14:28] for people i don't know where the numbers come from actually of all the numbers i've got my [14:31] back i think isn't that the shortfall in the defense budget as it currently exists because [14:41] of things like inflation and that's what i was getting at my point with chris like there's two [14:45] there's two separate things here there's just keeping the defense budget topped up when things [14:49] are very expensive now yeah and then there's the further topping off the defense budget when you want to [14:54] enhance it for a new world with new technology yeah when bigger picture and i could look up [14:58] where the 28 billion numbers exactly i'll give you some homework yeah yeah i'll take one home [15:03] um i think we had a stepping back we had a big spending review last year where the government [15:07] set out it's kind of it's bending envelopes for the different departments um and there'll be [15:11] another one next year to to do more forward looking i mean my memory of this is that at the [15:16] time where this strategic defense review was was put out people i think it was around two and [15:20] a half percent was expectation we thought we were going to live within that now obviously things [15:24] change the middle east has happened there'll be calls for higher defense spending and there'll [15:27] always be some some calls for actually now the budget isn't sufficient can we top it up in year [15:32] um then there'll be the next time round do we top it up permanently another set of decisions that are [15:37] really important obviously is what do you spend it on even once you've got a certain amount of money [15:40] there will be arguments about how much do you put it into new homes for soldiers to make them happy [15:45] versus drones versus something else so um and people will think there are underspends on some of those [15:49] bits relative to others depending on on what they think the need is so there's a kind of an overall [15:53] budgeting issue and then there's how much do you need for different areas um ben are there other [15:57] bits of the defense spending equation that you've been looking at today well at the risk of pre-empting [16:02] helen's homework we were asked to look into the 28 billion it's good it's not ladies first it's not [16:09] an official figure that the government's put out something that was briefed out to i think it was the [16:12] times initially but it's been bouncing around ever since and it seems to be the cumulative over four [16:18] years gap between what the government has given the military and what it's been asked to deliver [16:23] so it's not really comparable to the figures that we've been talking about and of course [16:27] to get to the three percent that would be on top of anything that would be done to fill these gaps [16:31] that have been identified by the forces but i i think it is worth making the point about defense [16:37] procurement because the treasury also has to think about value for money if it is going to spend more on [16:42] the military rather than just meeting these these targets which have been chosen for perhaps good [16:47] reasons uh and we were looking today at verify into the national audit offices uh sort of which is [16:53] the government's official spending independent spending watchdog into the mod the ministry of [16:58] defense last year and actually it was quite concerning about on that value for money front it said that [17:05] obviously the the mod is has lots of big spending capital infrastructure spending projects obviously [17:11] it has to spend a lot on new military equipment all the time but it said that of 47 big spending projects [17:19] that the ministry of defense had in 2024 25 12 of them were rated red and that meant appears to be unachievable [17:28] and the m the national order office specifically said that the mod has traditionally struggled to deliver projects on time and on budget so [17:38] i think the treasury is probably right to think about is this money going to be well spent how can [17:43] we get these controls in place to ensure that it is because simply spending money for the sake of it [17:48] to say you've spent the money isn't really what the country needs isn't what the country's national defense [17:53] needs so i think we should talk about that in this debate rather than just talking about the big spending numbers [17:58] and chris i mean the papers are writing lots of stories about oh defense secretary and the chancellor [18:04] at loggerheads keir starmer is gonna have to step in and decide who who wins the argument is that is [18:09] that the sense you're getting about what's happening in whitehall right now i mean i think there's a bit of [18:12] that but but i don't think we should overstate it in that yeah this happens all the time with i was [18:18] talking to a minister from a different department today about a completely different thing who was [18:24] talking with anguish about their wrestles with the treasury and how every so often they decide to [18:31] go over their head and plead to downing street that downing street ought to go to the treasury and tell [18:35] them to get on with it and give this particular department the money that it you know it argues it [18:40] really deserves for policies x y and z you know that is the that has been the nature of whitehall from [18:47] the year dot and you know to pick up on ben's point you know the treasury would make the argument that it [18:52] has to be scrupulous particularly at the moment but generally has to be scrupulous about wise spending [18:59] of public money and ensuring that it's delivering good value for money and there is a long-standing [19:05] critique fair or otherwise that's often thrown in the direction of the ministry of defense in [19:08] particular uh about uh the extent to which uh projects are uh as uh wise in their use of public [19:16] money as they as they could be so look yes that conversation is real but perhaps no more so than [19:23] in plenty of other uh other departments but i do think what we've had in the last couple of months since [19:31] the war in iran began and we and this is perhaps the sharpest case study in it this speech from lord [19:36] robertson is a sharpening of that argument that's been building for some time around these questions [19:41] on uh on defense and that's going to demand answers in the short medium and long term and in the short [19:47] term that is going to come down to the prime minister and the chancellor isn't it the specifics [19:51] of this defense investment plan in the short term and then the the wider the wider questions and then [19:58] at the risk of getting ahead of myself other political parties that might anticipate or desire [20:03] to be in government in the next decade or so um finding answers to these same questions around [20:12] the trade-offs around the extent to which you get that number that proportion of our national income [20:18] spent on defense up and then there's a wider thought that struck me this afternoon in the context of [20:23] um what the international monetary fund was saying about the resilience or the rights of the british [20:28] economy in the context of what's going on in iran of course we so often don't we in governments [20:33] benchmark their commitment to defense by looking at the proportion of national income that is spent [20:38] upon it if you have an economy that is struggling that is flatlining that is wounded by the conflict [20:45] then even if that proportion of a share of the economy is going up the actual amount of money that [20:50] you can spend on defense is not going up as much as it would be if the economy was growing and was it [20:56] was in was in better shape so you know that there's a consequence there too yes um helen chris mentioned [21:01] the imf the international monetary fund there's all these big meetings in washington they have every [21:05] spring uh with all the central bankers and the finance ministers rachel reeves is there and the big [21:10] thing that happened today was they they published their world economic outlook which is their uh projection [21:15] for the world economy in the next couple of years and it looks like the uk came out of that particularly [21:19] badly because lots of countries had their growth rates cut as a result of the the conflict in [21:26] with iran uh but it looks like the uk had theirs cut by more than most people did yeah i mean there's [21:31] a few things worth saying is that one is that nobody is surprised that growth forecasts are being [21:35] cut this year i mean the war basically means we are poorer and therefore we will grow less strongly [21:39] this year so that that isn't a um a surprise um the other thing worth saying is that there's just a [21:45] huge amount of uncertainty here these are forecasts we shouldn't over calibrate nobody knows what it's [21:50] going to look like on how exactly the uk will do compared to others it will depend on all sorts of [21:54] things that beyond you know beyond our crystal balls um so we shouldn't over calibrate to any given [21:59] number um but yes it looks like at least on the imf projections the uk is doing worse um i think there [22:05] will be a whole bunch of different reasons for that we are you know we're a big energy importer we are very [22:08] reliant on um that very long gas gas prices are higher inflation was already pretty high in the [22:14] uk relative to some other countries um there was already some concerns it was a bit sticky you know [22:20] this is going to push up more on inflation so there's a whole bunch of um a bunch of things going on [22:24] there i think the bigger question that i think got a lot less attention today actually is that what's [22:28] really going to matter for all of us for our living standards is not just what happens in the next [22:32] year obviously that's important but actually how permanent is this if actually you know the war ends [22:38] um and prices come down and actually in a year or two we're back kind of on track it will be an [22:44] annoying blip will be a bit poorer but we'll be okay if this really is a permanently worse situation [22:49] where prices are permanently higher there's permanently more uncertainty um that's really that's [22:54] that's you know that's really bad news well yeah for example is it like the global financial [22:59] crisis of 2008 where you look back at the graphs and the gap between where britain is now as a result of [23:05] that and where britain would have been if it hadn't happened like the gap is huge yeah absolutely [23:10] the parallel universe and the current universe absolutely you know big change in the growth rate [23:14] i mean all growth rates are small in some sense changes for a year matter but if you have them [23:18] compounding over very many years that's when you really start to look forward and think hang on a [23:22] minute we're talking about how we can afford defense or health under the current projections [23:27] if those projections come down then we're really looking at a difficult situation [23:31] you know to funding the future so i think that you know the news today was all about well the uk looks [23:35] worse this year than others fine um what we really should be thinking about and we don't know one knows [23:40] the answer this but like really is what's the long-term damage from this going to be also what i can't [23:44] work out is all these wise owls at organizations like the imf or the bank of england saying nobody panic [23:50] yet we we don't know really what's going on it might not be as bad as we think is that them being [23:57] responsible and not stoking panic uh and therefore the bad thing happening because they've said it's [24:02] going to happen or or are they a little bit in denial because people keep saying for example oil [24:08] trade yeah bless you chris um it is hay fever season because i see a lot of people saying oh hang [24:13] on the people that trade oil for example aren't panicking enough about what's going on and that that [24:19] the true worst case scenario is not being reflected in the oil price like where are you between like [24:24] don't panic and panic loads well i i'm i'm sort of in the camp of temperamentally i think of you [24:28] as a non-panic person yeah panicking is never the right option so don't panic that's not going to [24:31] help you i was using that as a euphemism for a level of concern yeah i think i think it probably [24:36] hasn't my look nobody knows what's going to happen that's the main message i don't know nobody else knows [24:41] um yeah but is that is that nobody knows in a reassuring way or nobody knows in an unreassuring way [24:47] um well nobody knows is that like nobody knows i think there is uncertainty like i can foresee a [24:52] set of you know a set of things where actually the war ends quickly and we're not too bad i still [24:57] think we're not going back to where we were in january i think the world you know i think actually [25:00] i think there will be some damage that persists longer than this year um i also imagine if we're [25:05] still here at christmas with a war then i'm going to be you know closer to that panic button um i think [25:10] what hasn't really probably sunk in is that we are poorer you know the question is only how much poorer [25:15] so there's no there's no world in which here we're not poor i mean we citizens we you know we we people [25:20] um you know we are having to pay more for what we import that is bad for us now it may go away [25:26] but we're not going to catch up i don't think and like regain what we lost in this period so i think [25:31] it's i think it's bad news we should we should be sort of knowing we have to live within these means [25:35] to some degree now hopefully it won't be too bad hopefully it will be a bad year we will recover um but i think [25:43] my sense is that in the broader psyche there isn't recognition that we are just i mean one [25:48] way this i think comes out is in the discussion about should there be a support package now in [25:52] some sense the more temporary for people's energy bills yeah all businesses energy bills the more [25:56] temporary this is actually you think it's a temporary blip we're going to help consumers and firms get [26:01] through this you borrow a bit money you help us get through maybe you do that but the more permanent [26:06] it is it's just like well there's no there's no borrowing that gets you out of that you're just [26:09] poor and you've got to live up to it so i think that's the discussion with it i'm not really [26:13] seeing i don't think so like not panicking yet but this is a definitely a serious situation so there [26:17] is adam there is one three-lettered acronymed organization which says this is pretty serious [26:22] and we should really worry which is the international energy agents so the fatty birol who was the head of [26:26] that said the world is facing its biggest energy shock in history bigger than the 19 since energy [26:32] was invented well pretty much uh so he's really sounding the warning about the implications of [26:37] that and to helen's point he is saying we need to take uh action now to reduce the amount of energy [26:44] we use so drive less reduce speed limits conserve energy which is pushing against a lot of the what [26:52] people are asking for some political parties are pushing for which is subsidies to uh the costs of [26:58] buying that energy so i think it's really interesting that you know the guy who is really [27:03] at the coalface so to speak of the energy question uh is saying is recommending a particular form of [27:10] policy and a lot of political parties are are saying the opposite and i think that speaks to [27:16] perhaps you know maybe we do need to recalibrate a little bit in terms of how permanent this shock [27:22] is going to be uh and the implications of of that but that's really important i think i think he's [27:27] right on the point about how you design a support package i mean sometimes prices are higher we want [27:31] consumers to be facing those higher prices we should be think realizing that driving and running [27:36] your washing machine and heating your home are all more expensive things now and therefore you sort of [27:40] need consumers to see that price and therefore and then you know reduce their demand now if you want [27:45] to help poorer people and that's a perfectly valid goal obviously you want to do it in a way that [27:49] doesn't change that pricing so give them a lump sum rather than change the price but i think you're right [27:53] but it speaks to my point that we're poorer because this stuff is more expensive and we either have to [27:58] pay current carry on paying you know to drive the same miles or we've got to drive fewer miles we've [28:02] got to you know reduce the thermostat or something else and chris final thoughts you none of this is [28:07] good for the government from their point of view i mean yeah short answer it isn't no it isn't it sharpens [28:14] all of the already sharp trade-offs that they were confronting i think the big picture point about the [28:21] economic backdrop is that you know i think so much of the the moods the outlook the vibe of politics [28:31] and the wider national conversation and the electorate at the moment is probably in many senses not entirely [28:37] but in many senses grounded in the kind of economic reality of the last a good number of years and here [28:44] comes yet another shock with its economic impact at least in the short term and let's see how long [28:50] the consequences are all of this in the swirl of the election campaigns going on ahead of the [28:57] elections around great britain uh next month and you know we only have to rewind what a couple of [29:03] months to the turn of this year where the government i think we've talked about this on newscast before [29:08] but where the government was just beginning tentatively publicly to talk about how at least some but not all [29:15] economic indicators were beginning to look perhaps a bit better now governments are always cautious [29:20] about overdoing that because they don't want people sort of shouting back at the you know at [29:24] the screen at the phone at the television at the radio oh come off it that's not how it feels to me [29:28] but you know that they they were uh they they felt that there was just the beginnings of some things [29:33] they could point to and yet and along comes and along comes this so yeah not easy for them in [29:39] the way that it's not easy for you know so many newscasters when you turn up at the petrol station [29:43] to fill up the car or all of the other uh economic consequences that we stare at at the moment i'm [29:48] just thinking about that sound bite ministers were using for a bit at the turn of the year which is [29:52] that we've turned the corner it turns out that we were reversing background which so it was strictly [29:57] accurate it's just not the right direction potentially discuss um chris good to catch up [30:03] ben thanks for all your hard work today no problem thanks and helen thanks for coming in thank you very much