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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back, Chris Mason. Hello.
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B
Hello.
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A
Are you rested after your Easter break?
- [00:05]
B
I think I'm supposed to say I'm recharged and ready to go. No, but I am actually. I had a nice break. It was all good. And you know, they were into election campaigns and all of that. There's no shortage of news about.
- [00:16]
A
Well, your first gig I noticed was the Scottish leaders debate on Sunday night.
- [00:19]
B
Yeah. Paisley Town hall on Sunday evening. Fascinating six way debate. There's another one to come in Wales that'll be six way as well in a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks time. And all the debates going on in England too. So yeah, you can't beat election campaigns. And yes, there's more than one this time.
- [00:35]
A
And also, yeah, back to another old chestnut which is a row about defence spending.
- [00:40]
B
Yeah. And you know, one that we're familiar with, aren't we? Because there's a wider conversation going on and has been for some time at Westminster amongst plenty of political parties around, you know, how do we have a societal conversation about the prospect of increasing defense spending and then with what trade offs. With what trade offs for taxes, with what trade offs for other spending that's been going on for a while, not least because of the context of the Ukraine war and then sharpened I think in the context of the conflict in Iran, because of the economic consequences it has in the short to medium term that we'll come on to discuss. But then the questions that it raises again and have been raised again today by Lord Robertson, the former Labour Defense Secretary, the former Secretary General of NATO, saying that he thinks the government is complacent. So, and you know, that is a sharpening of that argument, isn't it? And it's, and I guess it's then harder for governments to make an argument about spending more, but frankly on anything but on defense when the economy is struggling and has been for some time and with indications today that the war is going to make things harder still.
- [01:50]
A
Well, Chris, keep your powder dry on that issue because we're going to be digging into it in depth in this episode of Newscast. But before we do that, we're going to unveil our new edition of our opening titles. And as is traditional, Chris, you have to work out how many people are in it. Okay, take it away.
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B
Newscast.
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C
Newscast from the BBC.
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B
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
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A
We are in the midst of a rupture.
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D
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.
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B
Six, seven. Yeah, it's supposed to be me as a doctor. Daddy has.
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A
Has also a special correct Ooh la la.
- [02:27]
B
Thinking about it like a panto helped. Do we play music now or what do we do? Right, so I think we've got. So I got. So there was the guy from NASA. Number one, I think it was Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister. Number two. Number three, I didn't quite catch. Number four, I think was Keir Starmer. Number five was Donald Trump. And then I missed one or two. Then there was Kemi Badenok and then there was Nigel Farage. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I'm gonna say nine, with a nine in total.
- [02:56]
A
Oh, I actually haven't kept track of how many there are, but you didn't get them all, which means there were a few spots for newscast listeners to guess. And if you can identify the voices that Chris did not, then you can let us know. Newscastbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480 and see if you can beat
- [03:18]
B
Chris Mason, which I'm sure you can.
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A
Right, should we get on with today's episode?
- [03:23]
B
Yes.
- [03:23]
A
Right, well, help us to unpick this big story about defence spending. We're joined by Ben Chu, who's policy and analysis correspondent at BBCVerify. Hello, Ben.
- [03:30]
E
Hello, Adam.
- [03:31]
A
I always just thought of you as Ben from BBC Verify. I didn't realise there was so many.
- [03:34]
E
Well, you can call me whatever you like.
- [03:37]
A
The policy analysis is pretty good. And also Helen Miller, who's director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies is here. Hello again, Helen.
- [03:43]
C
Hello.
- [03:43]
A
Right, Chris, before we dig into the sort of the details of the argument around defence spending, why is everyone talking about it today, Tuesday the 14th of
- [03:52]
B
April, because Lord Robertson, George Robertson, former Labour Defence Secretary a couple of decades back and former Secretary General of NATO. In fact, he was NATO Secretary General at the time of 9 11. So was the Secretary General at the one time that NATO has triggered Article 5, that central element of NATO, that if one member is attacked, it's a acceptance that it is an attack on all and they come to the defense of the country that it has attacked, which of course was America in 2001. He is giving a lecture now, as we record it just gone 6:30 on Tuesday evening. He is giving a lecture very shortly, so we haven't yet heard it, but we are aware of the key things he is saying and he is saying in this lecture that the Iran war is a rude wake up call. He says the UK is underprepared, underinsured and we are under attack. He says national Security and safety is in peril. And he accuses political leaders of corrosive complacency. And the more recent backstory to this is that he was in the thick of a. Of a review done for the government, completed last summer about our defense. He's kept his powder dry publicly since then. The government promised off the back of that review that it would come forward with a defence investment plan by the autumn of last year. That's not yet seen the light of day. Prime minister says it's on his desk. Government says it's going to come soon. Soon can be quite an elastic concept in politics. And he's decided, Lord Robertson, clearly, that he's sufficiently frustrated that he wants to sort of break cover, talk publicly set out his concerns, and that's what he's doing. In this speech. The government's making an argument, as it has for some time, that it's putting up defence spending. But then, you know, here we go into the context, yes, of the war in Iran at the moment, the wider context around Western security war in Ukraine, et cetera, and then how this government and indeed its successors wrestle with the geopolitical landscape and the pressures that that puts on them to increase defence spending at what cost to other things?
- [06:11]
A
And, Chris, just to be really clear, Lord Robertson's criticisms could probably be levelled at lots of governments from the recent. But actually, the real political potency in his attack is that he's attacking the current government, the people who signed him up to do this defense review last year.
- [06:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who's been, you know, laboured to his bones for decades and decades and decades. He is somebody who has impeccable defence credentials, not just on the domestic stage as a former Defence secretary, but Secretary General of NATO, of all things. You know, perhaps one of the most grand titles in the world of Western defence you could possibly aspire to have on your cv. He's also somebody who doesn't make a habit of shooting his mouth off quite quietly spoken in his. In his manner and his demeanor doesn't race in front of the cameras and microphones very often. In fact, it's been quite the persuasion job as we await to hear this speech this evening, as we record, to even get a camera in the room to record what he's saying. So that just gives you sort of some sense around. Around him as a. Him as a figure in defense, but also him as a. As a character. And clearly given his party affiliation, it is a sharper critique for this government to absorb than it would if it came from somebody who, you know, a government could, could label as a partisan critic, an instinctive partisan critic from across the political divide.
- [07:35]
A
And Ben, give us some, some numbers about defence spending that can kind of help us understand this argument. Sure.
- [07:41]
E
Well, okay, look, I looked today at the NATO official estimate of what the UK is spending on defence, and that's the more relevant measure because obviously it's a NATO target which the government has set itself. The UK's figures are slightly below, but going on NATO's figures in 2025, it estimates that the UK would be spending about 70 billion pounds on qualifying defence spending, which is about 2.4% of GDP. And for context, the government set a target to get that up to 2.5% by 2020, 27. And to do that, it's had to cut, well, it's, it chose to cut the foreign aid budget by about 0.2% of GDP. So it's basically as a result of that decision is spending in today's money about another 6 billion pounds on defense to get to that 2.5% target. And it has a target to get to 3% by the end of the next Parliament, or although there's a lot of pressure for the government to do that by the end of this Parliament, put that in context, that would require another roughly £15 billion extra on top of that £6 billion already spent. So you're getting into considerable figures there in terms of the extra spending that would be needed to hit those, those targets.
- [08:59]
A
Also, Helen, it's worth remembering that that percentage of GDP thing is not a percentage of all the money the government spends in its total budget. It's a percentage of the whole economy. So it's a sort of funny kind of yardstick compared to how we measure public spending in lots of other areas.
- [09:16]
C
It is funny and it's important if all the income we create, so it's saying, you know, two and a half percent roughly of every pound creating the economy in a year will go on defence spending, possibly more if they reach their targets. You know, it is a big chunk already of what the government does. And it's worth panning out a bit further in the context here. I think, you know, for decades we were, the UK was cutting defence spending, you know, post Cold War, in some sense cutting relative to the size of the economy. While welfare and health were increasing. We're now at historically unusual position of trying to increase health, you know, welfare spending and ramping up defence. We have done that before. So it's also that broader context Here of things are different in the broader world. We are trying to have a bigger welfare state, a bigger health spending, older population and now we're trying to increase defense. And that's very unusual.
- [10:02]
A
And the sort of the equation George Robertson appears to be making in this speech and certainly he's quoted in the Financial Times this morning as making this, this equation is that you have to cut welfare spending so that you can put defence spending up. Is that a fair way of looking at the balance?
- [10:19]
C
I think it's true to say you have to find a way to pay for welfare spending. As Ben said, there are sufficiently big sums here. This isn't the money you find in the back of the sofa. If you really want to meaningfully increase defence spending on a permanent basis, not just for the next year, you got to fund it. Now you either got to fund it by higher taxes, that would be significant. So if you want to find an extra 15 billion, you're looking at 1 or 2 percentage points on the rate of VAT for example, or you cut other spending. Now you could cut welfare, which could mean, you know, benefits for working age people, pensioners, it could mean health, you know, the broader healthcare system. You wouldn't have to have to look there. But importantly, we spend so much money on health and welfare. If you don't want to touch those areas and you want to cut elsewhere, then you've really got to go pretty big cuts to find that money. So we really do have choices, we don't have to do anything in a sense, but the scale of the numbers here is such that we shouldn't think there's an easy way through this. You have to make some real prioritisation about where you're going to, how much you're going to raise and where you're going to put it.
- [11:18]
E
And just to put some numbers on that welfare point because we were asked to look into it for verify today. And looking purely at the working age welfare bill, so not including the state pension, which I think is probably a more relevant comparator to the point that George Robertson, Lord Robertson was making in the mid-1980s, the government was spending more on defense than working age welfare at the and as of today it's spending more on working age welfare than defence about just under 4% of GDP and that's projected to go up to 4.3%. So you're comparing that with 2.3, 2.5% of GDP. So that gives you a sense of the amount of resources which are going to these two areas and obviously many People say that the welfare wants to come down and the defence should go up, although there's lots of pressure on the government to keep spending on both.
- [12:02]
A
And also, Chris, it sounds like there's actually sort of two arguments about defence spending going on here. There's the George Robertson, Lord Robertson view about what you do in the medium to long term to create modern armed forces that can survive and thrive in the scary world we find ourselves in. But it also sounds like there's an argument going on about just sort of paying the immediate bills in the Ministry of Defence as well.
- [12:27]
B
Yes. And there's been noises from the mod today kind of articulating that. Now, some will say that, you know, government departments will often make noises known like these because they face a squeeze and they argue that their cause is greater when it comes to public spending than perhaps the department down the road. That's often the sort of tangle of conversation that goes on between and within government departments. And I think the other thing you've got going on here is the big picture thing, which is the kind of generational challenge or the challenge of the coming years, and then the more specific thing, which is, when does the government get round to publishing this defence investment plan that I mentioned that was promised not long after the publication of the Strategic Defence Review, which will set out how it would be paid for. And actually, as you were just in conversation there, I spotted on my laptop some remarks from Luke Pollard, who is the Defence Procurement Minister, who has popped up in front of the cameras in response in anticipation of Lord Robertson imminently saying the Government's working flat out, he says, to publish this defence investment plan and we're sort of pushing back on the idea that the reason it hasn't seen the light of day is because they can't decide where the money's going to come from, saying, we've already had, we already have extra money in our budget this year due to what the Chancellor was saying in the. In the budget. So, you know, you've got the sort of micro and the sort of practicalities of delivering what Lord Robertson and those who wrote the, who wrote the Defence Review were saying a year ago. And then that, that sort of medium term question as well as, as you say, the shorter term wrangles within the mod about the budgets that they're facing right now.
- [14:15]
A
And Helen, that shorter term wrangle that seems to boil down to a number that have been. People have been banding around of 28 billion pounds over the next four years. Just explain where that number has come from. And if that's a sort of legit number for.
- [14:26]
C
Oh, I don't know where that number's come from actually of all the numbers I've got my back,
- [14:31]
A
then it must be very. I think is go look it up. Isn't that the shortfall in the defense budget as it currently exists because of things like inflation? And that's what I was getting at my point with Chris. Like there's two separate things here. There's just keeping the defence budget topped up when things are very expensive now. And then there's the further topping off the defense budget when you want to enhance it for a new world with new technology.
- [14:55]
C
Yeah. When bigger picture. And I could look up where the 28 billion numbers. Exactly.
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A
Give you some. Omar.
- [14:59]
C
Yeah, yeah, I'll take one home. I mean bigger look, we had a. Stepping back. We had a big spending review last year where the government set out it's kind of its spending envelopes for the different departments and there'll be another one next year to do more forward looking. I mean my memory of this is that at the time where the Strategic Defence Review was. Was put out, people, I think it was around two and a half percent was the expectation. We thought we were going to live within that. Now, obviously things change. The Middle east has happened. There'll be calls for higher defence spending and there'll always be some. Some calls for actually now the budget isn't sufficient. Can we top it up in year? Then there'll be the next time round. Do we top it up permanently? Another set of decisions that are really important obviously is what do you spend it on? Even once you've got a certain amount of money, there will be arguments about how much do you put it into new homes for soldiers to make them happy versus drones versus something else. So. And people will think there are underspends on some of those bits relative to others, depending on what they think the need is. So there's a kind of an overall budgeting issue and then there's how much do you need for different areas.
- [15:54]
A
Ben, are there other bits of the defence spending equation that you've been looking at today?
- [15:58]
E
Well, at the risk of preempting Helen's homework, we were asked to look into the 28 billion.
- [16:02]
C
They can do it. For me, it's good job.
- [16:04]
E
It's not a. It's.
- [16:04]
A
I did ladies first.
- [16:06]
E
It's not an official figure that the government's put out something that was briefed out to. I think it was the Times initially, but it's been bouncing around ever since. And it seems to be the cumulative over four years gap between what the government has given the military and what it's been asked to deliver. So it's not really comparable to the figures that we've been talking about. And of course to get to the 3% that would be on top of anything that would be done to fill these gaps that have been identified by the forces. But I think it is worth making the point about defense procurement because the treasury also has to think about value for money if it is going to spend more on the military rather than just meeting these, these targets which have been chosen for perhaps good reasons. And we were looking today at VERIFY into the National Audit offices sort of which is the government's official spending independent spending watchdog into the mod, the Ministry of Defense last year. And actually it was quite concerning about on that value for money front. It said that obviously the mod is being has lots of big spending capital, infrastructure spending projects. Obviously it has to spend a lot on new military equipment all the time. But it said that of 47 big spending projects that the Ministry of defense had in 2024, 2512 of them were rated red. And that meant appears to be unachievable. And the the National Order office specifically said that the mod has traditionally struggled to deliver projects on time and on budget. So I think the treasury is probably right to think about is this money going to be well spent? How can we get these controls in place to ensure that it is? Because simply spending money for the sake of it to say you've spent the money isn't really what the country needs, isn't what the country's national defense needs. So I think we should talk about that in this debate rather than just talking about the big spending numbers.
- [17:56]
A
And Chris, I mean the papers are writing lots of stories about oh Defense Secretary and the Chancellor at loggerheads. Keir Starmer's gonna have to step in and decide who, who wins the argument is that is that the Sen getting about what's happening in Whitehall right now.
- [18:09]
B
I mean I think there's a bit of that but. But I don't think we should overstate it in that this happens all the time with I was talking to a minister from a different department state about a completely different thing who was talking with anguish about their wrestles with the treasury and how every so often they decide to go over their head and plead to Downing street that Downing street ought to go to the treasury and tell them to get on with it and give this particular department the money that it's, it, you know, it argues, it really deserves for policies X, Y and Z. You know, that is the, that has been the nature of Whitehall from the year Dot. And you know, to pick up on Ben's point, you know, the treasury would make the argument that it has to be scrupulous, particularly at the moment, but generally has to be scrupulous about wise spending of public money and ensuring that it's delivering good value for money. And there is a long standing critique, fair or otherwise, that's often thrown in the direction of the Ministry of Defence, in particular about the extent to which projects are as wise in their use of public money as they could be. So look, yes, that conversation is real, but perhaps no more so than in plenty of other departments. But I do think what we've had in the last couple of months since the war in Iran began, and this is perhaps the sharpest case study in it, this speech from Lord Robertson is a sharp sharpening of that argument that's been building for some time around these questions on defence. And that's going to demand answers in the short, medium and long term. And in the short term that is going to come down to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, isn't it? The specifics of this defence investment plan in the short term and then the wider questions. And then at the risk of getting ahead of myself, other political parties that might anticipate or desire to be in government in the next decade or so, finding answers to these same questions around the trade offs, around the extent to which you get that number, that proportion of our national income spent on defence up. And then there's a wider thought that struck me this afternoon in the context of what the International Monetary Fund was saying about the resilience or the rise of the British economy in the context of what's going on in Iran, of course, we so often don't, we in governments benchmark their commitment to defence by looking at the proportion of national income that is spent upon it. If you have an economy that is struggling, that is flatlining, that is wounded by the conflict, then even if that proportion of a share of the economy is going up, the actual amount of money that you can spend on defense is not going up as much as it would be if the economy was growing and was, it was in, was in better shape. So you know that there's a consequence there too.
- [20:57]
A
Yes, Helen, Chris mentioned the imf, the International Monetary Fund. There's all these big meetings in Washington they have every spring with all the central central bankers and the Finance ministers, Rachel Reeves is there. And the big thing that happened today was they, they published their World Economic Outlook, which is their projection for the world economy in the next couple of years. And it looks like the UK came out of that particularly badly because lots of countries had their growth rates cut as a result of the, the conflict in with Iran. But it looks like the UK had theirs cut by more than most people did.
- [21:28]
C
Yeah, I mean, there's a few things worth saying is that one is that nobody is surprised that growth forecasts are being cut this year. I mean, the war basically means we are poorer and therefore we less strongly this year. So that, that isn't a, a surprise. The other thing worth saying is that there is just a huge amount of uncertainty here. These are forecasts we shouldn't over calibrate. Nobody knows what it's going to look like on how exactly the UK will do compared to others. It will depend on all sorts of things that beyond, you know, beyond our crystal balls. So we shouldn't over calibrate to any given number. But yes, it looks like, at least on the IMF projections, the UK is doing worse. I think there'll be a whole bunch of different reasons for that. We are, you know, we're a big energy importer. We are very reliant on that, very reliant on gas. Gas prices are higher. Inflation was already pretty high in the UK relative to some other countries. There was already some concerns. It was a bit sticky. You know, this is going to push up more on inflation. So there's a whole bunch of, bunch of things going on there. I think the bigger question that I think got a lot less attention today actually, is that what's really going to matter for all of us for our living standards is not just what happens in the next year, obviously that's important, but actually how permanent is this if actually, you know, the war ends and prices come down and actually in a year or two we're back kind of on track, it will be an annoying blip, will be a bit poorer, but we'll be okay. If this really is a permanently worse situation where prices are permanently higher, there's permanently more uncertainty. That's really, that's, that's, you know, in. That's really bad news.
- [22:54]
A
Well, yeah. For example, is it like the global financial crisis of 2008, where you look back at the graphs and the gap between Britain is now as a result of that, and where Britain would have been if it hadn't happened? Like, the gap is huge, the parallel universe and the Current universe, absolutely.
- [23:10]
C
You know, big change in the growth rate. I mean all growth rates are small in some sense. Changes for a year matter. But if you have them compounding over very many years, that's when you really start to look forward and think, hang on a minute, we're talking about how we can afford defense or health under the current projections. If those projections come down, then we really look at a difficult situation, you know, to funding the future. So I think that, you know, the news today was all about, well, the UK looks worse this year than others. Fine. What we really should be thinking about and we don't, no one knows the answer but like really is what's the long term damage from this going to be?
- [23:41]
A
Also what I can't work out is all these wise owls at organizations like the IMF or the bank of England saying nobody panic yet we, we don't know really what's going on. It might not be as bad as we think. Is that them being responsible and not stoking panic and therefore the bad thing happening because they've said it's gonna happen or are they a little bit in denial? Cause people keep saying, for example the oil trade. Bless you Chris.
- [24:07]
B
Sorry, excuse me.
- [24:08]
A
It is hay fever season. Because I see a lot of people saying, oh hang on. The people that trade oil for example, aren't panicking enough about what's going on and the true worst case scenario is not being reflected in the oil price. Like where are you between like don't panic and panic loads?
- [24:23]
C
Well, I'm sort of in the camp of temperamentally.
- [24:25]
A
I think of you as a non panic load.
- [24:27]
C
Yeah, panicking is never the right option. So don't panic. That's not gonn help you.
- [24:29]
A
I was using that as a euphemism for a level of concern.
- [24:32]
C
Yeah, I think, I think it probably hasn't my. Look, nobody knows what's going to happen. That's the main message. I don't know. Nobody else knows.
- [24:39]
A
Yeah, but obviously nobody knows in a reassuring way or nobody knows in an unreassuring way.
- [24:45]
C
Well, nobody knows since that like nobody knows. I think there is uncertainty. Like I can foresee a set of, you know, a set of things where actually the war ends quickly and we're not too bad. I still think we're not going back to where we were in January. I think the world, you know, I think actually I think there will be some damage that persists longer than this year. I also imagine if we're still here at Christmas with a war, then I'm Going to be, you know, closer to that panic button. I think what hasn't really probably sunk in is that we are poorer. You know, the question is only how much poorer. 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, you know, we are having to pay more for what we import. That is bad for us now. It may go away, but we're not going to catch up, I don't think, and like regain what we lost in this period. So I think it's, I think it's bad news. We should, we should be sort of known. We have to live within these means to some degree now. Hopefully it won't be too bad. Hopefully it will be a bad year. We will recover. But I think that my sense is that in the broader psyche there isn't recognition that we are just prominent. One way this I think comes out is in the discussion about should there be a support package now in some sense the more temporary energy bills, the people energy bills. Yeah, all businesses energy bills. The more temporary this is actually you think it's just a temporary blip. We're going to help consumers and firms get through this. You borrow a bit money, you help us get through. Maybe you do that. But the more permanent it is, it's just like, well, there's no, there's no borrowing that gets you out of that. You're just poor and you've got to live up to it. So I think that's the discussion whether I'm not really seeing. I don't think so. Look, not panicking yet, but this is a definitely a serious situation.
- [26:14]
E
So there is Adam, there is one three lettered acronym organization which says this is pretty serious and we should really worry, which is the International Energy Agency. So the Fati Birol who was the head of that said the world is facing its biggest energy shock in history. Bigger than the 19 since energy was invented. Well, pretty much. So he's really sounding the warning about the implications of that. And to Helen's point, he is saying we need to take action now to reduce the amount of energy we use. So drive less, reduce speed limits, conserve energy, which is pushing against a lot of the, what people are asking for or some political parties are pushing for, which is subsidies to the costs of buying that energy. So I think it's really interesting that, you know, the guy who is really at the coal face, so to speak of the energy question is saying is recommending a particular form of policy and a lot of political parties are saying the opposite. And I think that speaks to perhaps, you know, maybe we do need to recalibrate a little bit in terms of how permanent this shock is going to be and the implications of, of that.
- [27:23]
C
But that's really important. I think he's right on the point about how you design a support package. I mean, sometimes prices are higher. We want consumers to be facing those higher prices. We should be think realizing that driving and running your washing machine and heating your home are all more expensive things now. And therefore you sort of need consumers to see that price and therefore, and then, you know, reduce their demand. Now if you want to help poorer people, and that's a perfectly valid goal, obviously you want to do it in a way that doesn't change that pricing. So give them a lump sum rather than change the price. But I think you're right. But it speaks to my point that, that we're poorer because this stuff is more expensive and we either have to pay current carry on paying to drive the same miles or we've got to drive fewer miles, we've got to reduce the thermostat or something else.
- [28:02]
A
And Chris, final thoughts to you. None of this is good for the government from their point of view.
- [28:07]
B
I mean. Yeah, short answer, it isn't. No, it isn't. It sharpens all of the already sharp trade offs that they were confronting. I think the big picture point about the economic backdrop is that, that, you know, I think so much of the, the mood, the outlook, the vibe of politics and the wider national conversation and the electorate at the moment is probably in many senses not entirely, but in many senses grounded in the kind of economic reality of the last a good number of years. And here comes yet another shock with its economic impact, at least in the short term. And let's see how long the consequences are. All of this in the swirl of the election campaigns going on ahead of the elections around Great Britain next month. And you know, we only have to rewind what, a couple of months to the turn of this year where the government, I think we've talked about this on newscast before, but where the government was just beginning tentatively, publicly to talk about how at least some, but not all economic indicators were, were beginning to look perhaps a bit better. Now governments are always cautious about overdoing that because they don't want people sort of shouting back at the, you know, at the screen, at the phone, at the television, at the radio, oh, come off it, that's not how it feels to me. But you know, they, they were, they they felt that there was just the beginnings of some things they could point to. And, yeah, and along comes. And along comes this. So, yeah, not easy for them in the way that it's not easy for, you know, so many newscasters when you turn up at the petrol station to fill up the car. Or all of the other economic consequences that we stare at at the moment.
- [29:45]
A
I'm just thinking about that sound bite Ministers were using for a bit at the turn of the year, which is that we've turned the corner. It turns out that we were reversing back round it, so it was strictly accurate. It's just not the right direction, potentially. Discuss, Chris, good to catch up.
- [30:00]
B
Ta.
- [30:01]
A
Ben, thanks for all your hard work today.
- [30:02]
E
No problem.
- [30:02]
A
Thanks, Adam and Helen, thanks for coming in.
- [30:04]
C
Thank you very.
- [30:13]
A
And that's all for this episode of Newscast. We will be back with another one very soon. And remember, enter our unofficial competition of how many names can you identify in the new newscast opening titles? Entries are open now. Newscastbc.co.uk and terms and conditions. There is no prize, just glory. If you get all the names right, see you again soon. Bye bye.
- [30:34]
B
Newscast.
- [30:35]
C
Newscast from the BBC.
- [30:37]
D
From one newscast caster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on 440-3301-23948. Oh, be assured, I promise we listen to.