A nice piece that gives some colour to the 'lack of capital investment is holding back NHS productivity' story

Many thanks to Emilio Casalicchio for including my analysis (aka my 'screaming into the wind') in today's Playbook.

x.com/POLITICOEurope…

“The government is trying to have it both ways by saying this is a game changing amount of investment going into defence, but also this is small enough that we can make up for it by getting rid of a few thousand civil servants.”

Ben Zaranko on BBC Politics #PoliticsLive

I'll be on BBC Politics Live shortly talking about this. I'll be the man in the jazzy tie who needs a hair cut and forgot to shave this morning.

For decades, steady reductions in the amount spent on defence allowed for extra spending on things like the NHS without a need to increase taxes. In essence, we replaced a warfare state with a welfare state.

The challenge now is that we're going to have to pay for both.