Ed Balls was shut down by Pat McFadden as he grilled the politician on the government's pledge on defence spending. Earlier in the month, the Defence Secretary John Healey said there was "no doubt" that the government would hit the target of 3% of GDP in the next parliament. However, the UK and its NATO allies have now agreed to increase spending on defence and related areas to 5% of GDP by 2035.
On Tuesday's (June 24) instalment of Good Morning Britain, Ed shared remarks made from former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who claimed "the government thinks it can use smoke and mirrors to deceive the public and Donald Trump". Ed declared: "The reality is your defence spending pledge doesn't happen until 2035. There is no money set aside to pay for that rise in defence spending after 2028/29. Economists say it's a £40 million gap."
The presenter probed whether this will be sorted by implementing more taxes or simply "out of thin air", concluding with the question: "Is it just smoke and mirrors?"
The brutal line of questioning didn't seem to faze the MP as he calmly responded: "I respect Ben Wallace but I do have to say that there is a contrast. When we announced an increase in defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP, we set out how we were going to pay for it.
"That wasn't the case with the previous government."
The ITV host completely disagreed with this, claiming the Labour government has not set out how they are going to pay for it.
"You're doing exactly the same thing now that you've just accused Ben Wallace of doing," Ed fumed. "This is an unfunded pledge without saying where the money is going to come from. You used to call that Liz Truss economics - it's what you're doing!"
McFadden firmly hit back at these claims, explaining: "No. What I'm doing is pointing out that when we increased defence spending, we set out exactly how we'll pay for it. These spending reviews happen every two to three years, we just had one a couple of weeks ago.
"Everything in that, we've set out how we'll pay for and as we increase defence expenditure in future spending reviews, we'll set out in those how that's going to be funded too."
