CC,
I dare say that Tony Blair did oversee a rise in spending on defence, he also presided over a farrago of military interventions, not all unjustified, but culminating in Iraq in 2003. When he took office in 1997, the RAF had 20 frontline Tactical Squadrons, when Labour lost in 2010, they had 12. The Army had dropped from 40 infantry battalions to about 34. The wars were supposed to have been funded direct from the treasury (Capital Spending).
Clearly the defence budget was inflated slightly to absorb this but by no means enough.
FB
