The hosts review the first face-to-face PMQs between Kemi Badenoch and new Labour PM Andy Burnham, framing it against a backdrop of rising government borrowing costs affecting Britain and other major economies. They discuss defence spending commitments, noting Chancellor John Healy's past resignation over defence funding and the government's long-dated pledge to reach higher NATO spending targets, and debate whether this amounts to a political fudge given fiscal constraints. Comparisons are drawn between Burnham's minor tax tweaks and Liz Truss's 2022 mini-budget, alongside global bond market moves in Japan, Germany and the US. The triple lock on pensions and welfare cuts also feature as political pressure points facing Burnham going into the autumn budget season.
The second half turns to the widely covered US trial of a former maternity nurse accused of killing her three children, examining the postpartum psychosis defence, the scale of public crowdfunding support she has received, and a historical comparison to the Sally Clark case in Britain. The episode closes with a brief, lighter segment on Apple following Google in renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America" on US maps, after Donald Trump's earlier renaming move.
Spending
Key points from the discussion
The points they raised, and the official data behind them.
The hosts noted that UK government borrowing costs have risen to nearly their highest level since 2008.
~00:14The yield is the interest rate the government pays to borrow money over ten years by selling bonds (gilts).
Related UK data
See Finance — Government Borrowing Rate →Context
UK government borrowing costs, reflected in gilt yields, determine how expensive it is for the Treasury to fund public spending. Rising yields globally have been linked to inflation concerns, high government debt levels and market repricing since 2022.
The hosts said the government's fiscal headroom, the margin against its self-imposed borrowing rules, has effectively disappeared as debt-servicing costs have risen.
~05:10Fiscal headroom is the gap between a government's spending and its self-imposed fiscal rules, acting as a buffer against unexpected economic shocks.
Not on Trend yet · adding this seriesThe hosts discussed a defence select committee chairman's call for the government to commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence.
~07:47A measure of defence spending as a proportion of the country's total economic output.
Related UK data
See Defence — Defence Budget →Context
NATO members have discussed raising defence spending targets amid geopolitical tensions, with debate in the UK over whether to commit beyond the previous 2% NATO benchmark.
The hosts noted the government's longer-term ambition to raise defence spending to three and a half percent of GDP by 2035.
~10:36Related UK data
See Defence — Defence Budget →The hosts referenced the Sally Clark case from twenty-five years earlier, around 1999, in which a mother was wrongly convicted of killing her two children.
~30:34Context
Sally Clark was a British solicitor convicted in 1999 of murdering her two infant sons, based partly on flawed statistical evidence about the likelihood of two cot deaths in one family. Her conviction was overturned in 2003 after it emerged one child had a bacterial infection; she died in 2007.
The hosts said Lindsey Clancy's husband set out to crowdfund 10,000 dollars for her legal defence but the campaign raised around a million dollars.
~32:44