The government has published its Defence Investment Plan, committing an extra £15bn over four years. Annual defence spending will reach almost £80bn by 2029, or 2.7% of GDP. More than £5bn of the new money will fund a drone transformation programme.
The Defence Investment Plan's path to nearly £80bn a year cleared the chamber by 76% to 24%, a rout by margin but a modest one by headcount — 13 yes votes against 4 no. On a question that touches tax, spending priorities and Britain's place in a more dangerous world, that is a fairly emphatic endorsement from those who turned out.
The only real fracture sits in the middle of working life: the 25-34 group split 7-3, the closest thing to genuine dissent in the data, while the 55-64s were unanimous, 4 for 0. Younger and older voters here converged on yes even as the largest bloc, those in their late twenties and thirties, showed some appetite to question the bill.
Men and women voted in near-identical proportion, 73% and 67% yes respectively, suggesting this was not fought along the gender lines that often colour welfare or culture-war questions — this looked more like a security-versus-spending call, echoing the same instinct that has pushed successive governments back towards Cold War-era budget shares as the Ukraine war recalibrates what "normal" defence spending looks like.
A small, engaged sample said build the drones and pay the bill; the loudest hesitation came not from the young or the old but from the middle.
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