Starmer says defence spending cannot be ‘bottomless pit’ and MoD has to ‘spend better’ Keir Starmer is speaking now. They are at Malloy Aeronautics, a firm that designs heavy-lift drones, and Starmer says this morning they showed him one of the heaviest drones he had ever seen. Last year, I made the decision in the national interest to reprioritise aid spending towards defence and achieve the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war.