Best Of

It says something for the surreal timeline we’re living that the reaction to Trump appointing an actual Putin supporter (not an equivocator, or an isolationist or appeaser, but a full fat Putinist - oh and Assad apologist to boot) to the top national intelligence role in our most powerful geopolitical ally is greeted in some quarters by “ooh, liberal tears, cry harder”.

Suggest this means that the UK should increase defence spending and you'll see more than liberal tears, you'll get full force tantrums from many of them.

The budget significantly increased defence expenditure. I haven't heard any complaints from the left.

It really didn't.

A significant increase would be to a minimum of 3% with immediate effect and planned increases to over 4%.

The NHS is getting an increase 10x the size that defence is.

What do you think the reaction would be if those two increases were now swapped ?

It is a real terms increase over Tory budgets.

You might not like that fact, and might not like the fact that we have the smallest armed forces in Centuries because of Tory cuts, but it is simply true.

I don't like the fact and condemned it at the time.

But the cuts were made during the coalition era.

That same coalition era some claim to have been an era of wondrously competent government.

It had good bits and bad bits. Justice and defence were bad bits

Triple locking pensions and tripling student tuition fees were also bad bits.

Good bits included increasing VAT, stopping ID cards, pension reforms and bringing in some rigour to school exam grades.

Stopping ID cards was a huge mistake.

The ID card database plans were literally insane.

The database project was a guaranteed failure from the start. Actually worse than the giant NHS IT project failures.

They would, incidentally be a massive breach of a number of modern EU laws on data protection and control of personal data.

Guess what - the proposal to introduce ID cards, again, that endlessly pops up in Whitehall, has the same database ideas. So if implemented would mean either we never align with EU data laws or the system would have to scrapped.

If, that is, any of it could actually be built.

It says something for the surreal timeline we’re living that the reaction to Trump appointing an actual Putin supporter (not an equivocator, or an isolationist or appeaser, but a full fat Putinist - oh and Assad apologist to boot) to the top national intelligence role in our most powerful geopolitical ally is greeted in some quarters by “ooh, liberal tears, cry harder”.

Suggest this means that the UK should increase defence spending and you'll see more than liberal tears, you'll get full force tantrums from many of them.

Bullshit. Read what actual Liberals are writing.

https://x.com/threshedthought/status/1856273430523326637?s=46

Mark Martin is on the defence select committee.

I think he is deeply mistaken to think that Britain can concentrate solely on defending the Euro-Atlantic area from Russia.

Britain is deeply integrated into a global economy and so we will be massively affected by any conflict that affects global trade, such as a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan, war on the Korean peninsula, or a large-scale war in the Middle East. We also have an interest in defending democracies around the world if they come under attack from authoritarian dictatorships, so I would hope the country would not be willing to abandon democracies such as Japan or Australia to fend for themselves against China.

"My family's been on this land for 375 years. I want to pass this down to my boys... you're taking that away from me... shame on you"

Welsh farmer Gareth Wyn Jones challenges Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on #PoliticsLive over inheritance tax changes

https://x.com/BBCPolitics/status/1856758688725225676

Pay tax?

He looks young enough that he will be able to suitably plan things so that his children take over and inherit without a problem...

Yeah, fuck him.

That wasn’t what I said - I said that he could do things in a way that would allow him to fulfill his desire.

But I have zero problem with agricultural land actually being owned by farmers and not being sold at 2-5 times its actual value because it’s a legal tax avoidance scheme