Sky News presenter Sean Fletcher issued a breaking news announcement this afternoon about Sir Keir Starmer. As the breaking news banner flashed across the screen, the journalist reported that the Prime Minister had welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to Downing Street today.
Fletcher said: “Prime Minister Keir Starmer has welcomed his Japanese counterpart ahead of the G7 summit in France next week. The PM is meeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi inside Number 10. The UK and Japan are set to agree that £18 billion worth of investment deals are expected to create tens of thousands of jobs.
“Discussions will also include helping UK defence firms access Japanese investment, and we were obviously hearing from defence firms during the week with all of the discussions around defence with the resignation of the Defence Secretary and Dan Jarvis taking over, and the issues around how much we will be spending on our defence industry.”
He added: “Well, that will obviously be a boost if they were open to the Japanese market.”
In recent days, Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns stepped down, with both men blasting the government’s plans for defence.
Following the blow, Starmer told the BBC that defence spending is his “number one priority” and added that he’d made “hard-edged decisions” to increase military funding.
The government has pledged to increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.
Starmer added during the interview when challenged about his position: “Whoever is prime minister is going to face the same prevailing winds as I am facing, none of that is going to change.”
The leader also said: “I was elected to serve this country notwithstanding difficult circumstances – that is what I am doing.”