As the row over the military budget grows, Keir Starmer has spent much of the past few days insisting he’s spending huge sums of taxpayer money on defence. Every single government department has made cuts to fund next month’s defence investment plan (Dip), the prime minister promised, resulting in “the biggest sustained increase since the cold war”. On Sunday, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, told the BBC that cabinet ministers have been asked to look for further reductions to help fund defence.

Now squint and replace the word “defence” with “welfare”. Imagine Starmer – or any prime minister for that matter – boasting they’ve pinched cash from the NHS or schools to boost benefit payments. Indeed, swap “defence” for any sort of progressive cause – think housing, social care or net zero – and you’d be hard-pressed to picture a politician trying to save their career by pledging vast levels of spending, let alone if that spending was lifted from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Call it two-track governance, generously funding the military is seen as prudent and necessary but doing the same to improve the lives of ordinary people is wasteful and optional. Just look at how, when Wes Streeting criticised Starmer’s handling of the defence budget last week, he lamented the £4.5bn the government is set to spend on walking and cycling projects. That the former health secretarywill presumably be well aware such initiatives ultimately pay for themselves in improved public health outcomes just doesn’t fit with the narrative. A stronger military is an investment; a healthy and happy population is frivolous.

To question this double standard is not to say that there is not a good case for more defence spending. The world undeniably feels increasingly unsafe, with conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and an irate Donald Trump in the White House. As if to prove the point, at the weekend, British armed forces intercepted a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the Channel.