What the commentators said

The Government has at least found “a big chunk of change” for defence, said Robert Fox on Reaction.life. As well as helping to plug a £13bn hole in the MoD’s budget, the money will help the Armed Forces combat new threats from drones, cyber operations and chemical weapons like the Novichok poison used in Salisbury. It will also go towards modernising the Navy, helping Britain ready itself for combat across “land, sea, air, space and cyber”. The “renewed focus on security is not before time”, said Edward Lucas in The Times. Not only has defence spending fallen in real terms every year since 2010; Britain has also been slow to adapt to the changing nature of war and the sophisticated threats posed by Russia and China. But the PM’s announcement leaves many questions unanswered – not least how to address budget shortfalls in other parts of the notoriously profligate MoD. Hard work and difficult choices lie ahead.

Defence is just one of the areas in which the Government’s “largesse” has been on show, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. In the past year, Sunak has made good on an array of “lavish” manifesto promises, including money for police, nurses, doctors, hospitals and infrastructure projects. Yet by nature Sunak is a fiscal conservative, and his hopes of succeeding Johnson depend on him successfully wooing traditional small-state Tories: he’ll soon put the brakes on spending. “Threadbare public services face deeper cuts.” Britain’s national debt has reached its highest level since 1960, said William Hague in The Daily Telegraph. And with tax rises difficult to sell to “an instinctively rebellious Parliament”, Sunak will need to reject demands for endless spending if he is to restore order to the nation’s finances. For now, many of the tough decisions are still being ducked, said Katy Balls in the I newspaper. The overwhelming sense is that Sunak is keeping the spending taps open until a vaccination programme allows the economy to reopen again. But the fact is that, sooner or later, something will have to give.