Best Of

So today the Royal Navy managed, after 6 days of truly extraordinary work, to put a vessel to sea. The reality is that almost all of the proposed increase in public spending on defence being planned by the government will achieve very little more than giving us the defence forces that we allegedly had, at least on paper, plus, if we are lucky, enough ammunition to fight a war of more than 2 weeks duration.

The extent to which our defence forces have been allowed to fall into desuetude whilst almost unlimited sums are spent on the likes of Ajax is a national disgrace, not just for this government (although they are not excused) but for all of our governments of the last 20 odd years since Gulf War 2 was finished. So much money wasted on a system with more admirals than ships, more generals than tanks and more Air Commanders than deployable aircraft.

Sadly not the case. The planned increase in spend on the nuclear deterrent (necessary to renew it) means that spending on the conventional forces will fall. The state of Britain's conventional forces can be expected to deteriorate further, despite the best efforts of the poor sods at the sharp end.

Britain has reached the stage where ragged holes have now suddenly appeared in what was a threadbare garment and Labour aren't even proposing to start the repair job.

But why?

Britain still spends - relatively and globally - a fuck of a lot of money on defence. We are I think the fifth or biggest military spender in the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

Where is it going? How can they spunk all this money up the wall, to the extent we can only get one ship out to defend sovereign bases, after a fortnight's delay, when some guy nips down to Smiths for half a ton of blu-tak?

It don't make sense

It's because Britain is trying to do more than it is willing to spend.

So there are two aircraft carriers which soaks up huge amounts of money and manpower. There are foreign bases all over the place, which ties up capability and manpower in defending them. There is the commitment to NATO's enhanced forward presence, which means deploying most of Britain's operational army capability to Estonia. There is the commitment to JEF, which uses up more capability.

And then there's procurement, where everything has to be designed bespoke for Britain at enormous cost and sometimes questionable efficacy.

interesting - genuinely - thankyou

It seems to me we need a rethink of our defence spend from first principles, in the light of all recent events, especially Ukraine, Iran etc

Non-negotiable: independent nuclear deterrent. We could usefully link with maybe Germany or Japan on creating missiles to carry our warheads so that we don't have to rely on the USA

Special forces

Military intelligence

All forms of autonomous drones, they are the future.....

But beyond that, we need to question everything. Do piloted jets have a future? Likewise tanks with drivers? Aircraft carriers? Maybe admit they were a terrible error? Or adapt them for robot jets

Robotics is about to render much present military thinking absurd, the way tanks rendered cavalry and trenches redundant, or the way machine guns and barbed wire overtook Napoleonic war

There's all of that, but then I think there's just a fundamental truth that for an island trading nation, no longer able to rely on leadership from the US, 2.x% of GDP is not enough to defend British interests.

Somewhere the money needs to be found to increase that to 4%.

We need to spend much more on Defence.

There is no getting around it.

And that means more spending cuts or tax rises.

There needs to be spending cuts AND tax rises.

Everyone needs to lose out with no exceptions.

I suspect the average voter will not be willing to pay for cuts to public services and their pensions and tax rises to pay for increased arms to Ukraine and increased bombs on regimes in the Middle East they couldn't give a toss about relatively speaking.

Unless Putin's army is literally in France the average voter is not going to be willing to fork out for a vast increase in defence spending

So today the Royal Navy managed, after 6 days of truly extraordinary work, to put a vessel to sea. The reality is that almost all of the proposed increase in public spending on defence being planned by the government will achieve very little more than giving us the defence forces that we allegedly had, at least on paper, plus, if we are lucky, enough ammunition to fight a war of more than 2 weeks duration.

The extent to which our defence forces have been allowed to fall into desuetude whilst almost unlimited sums are spent on the likes of Ajax is a national disgrace, not just for this government (although they are not excused) but for all of our governments of the last 20 odd years since Gulf War 2 was finished. So much money wasted on a system with more admirals than ships, more generals than tanks and more Air Commanders than deployable aircraft.

Sadly not the case. The planned increase in spend on the nuclear deterrent (necessary to renew it) means that spending on the conventional forces will fall. The state of Britain's conventional forces can be expected to deteriorate further, despite the best efforts of the poor sods at the sharp end.

Britain has reached the stage where ragged holes have now suddenly appeared in what was a threadbare garment and Labour aren't even proposing to start the repair job.

But why?

Britain still spends - relatively and globally - a fuck of a lot of money on defence. We are I think the fifth or biggest military spender in the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

Where is it going? How can they spunk all this money up the wall, to the extent we can only get one ship out to defend sovereign bases, after a fortnight's delay, when some guy nips down to Smiths for half a ton of blu-tak?

It don't make sense

It's because Britain is trying to do more than it is willing to spend.

So there are two aircraft carriers which soaks up huge amounts of money and manpower. There are foreign bases all over the place, which ties up capability and manpower in defending them. There is the commitment to NATO's enhanced forward presence, which means deploying most of Britain's operational army capability to Estonia. There is the commitment to JEF, which uses up more capability.

And then there's procurement, where everything has to be designed bespoke for Britain at enormous cost and sometimes questionable efficacy.

interesting - genuinely - thankyou

It seems to me we need a rethink of our defence spend from first principles, in the light of all recent events, especially Ukraine, Iran etc

Non-negotiable: independent nuclear deterrent. We could usefully link with maybe Germany or Japan on creating missiles to carry our warheads so that we don't have to rely on the USA

Special forces

Military intelligence

All forms of autonomous drones, they are the future.....

But beyond that, we need to question everything. Do piloted jets have a future? Likewise tanks with drivers? Aircraft carriers? Maybe admit they were a terrible error? Or adapt them for robot jets

Robotics is about to render much present military thinking absurd, the way tanks rendered cavalry and trenches redundant, or the way machine guns and barbed wire overtook Napoleonic war

There's all of that, but then I think there's just a fundamental truth that for an island trading nation, no longer able to rely on leadership from the US, 2.x% of GDP is not enough to defend British interests.

Somewhere the money needs to be found to increase that to 4%.

We need to spend much more on Defence.

There is no getting around it.

And that means more spending cuts or tax rises.

There needs to be spending cuts AND tax rises.

Everyone needs to lose out with no exceptions.

Good luck with that on the front of a manifesto.

In some ways its easier to implement if everyone loses out as it reduces the resentment from those who lose out but see others not doing so.

We're all in this together was a good slogan from Cameron and Osborne - the problem was that it was only a slogan and many were given exceptions from the cuts and pay freezes.

Alexei Sayle, once said: 'Austerity is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton.'

Now that would have been a more appropriate slogan from Cameron and Osborne.

So today the Royal Navy managed, after 6 days of truly extraordinary work, to put a vessel to sea. The reality is that almost all of the proposed increase in public spending on defence being planned by the government will achieve very little more than giving us the defence forces that we allegedly had, at least on paper, plus, if we are lucky, enough ammunition to fight a war of more than 2 weeks duration.

The extent to which our defence forces have been allowed to fall into desuetude whilst almost unlimited sums are spent on the likes of Ajax is a national disgrace, not just for this government (although they are not excused) but for all of our governments of the last 20 odd years since Gulf War 2 was finished. So much money wasted on a system with more admirals than ships, more generals than tanks and more Air Commanders than deployable aircraft.

Sadly not the case. The planned increase in spend on the nuclear deterrent (necessary to renew it) means that spending on the conventional forces will fall. The state of Britain's conventional forces can be expected to deteriorate further, despite the best efforts of the poor sods at the sharp end.

Britain has reached the stage where ragged holes have now suddenly appeared in what was a threadbare garment and Labour aren't even proposing to start the repair job.

But why?

Britain still spends - relatively and globally - a fuck of a lot of money on defence. We are I think the fifth or biggest military spender in the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

Where is it going? How can they spunk all this money up the wall, to the extent we can only get one ship out to defend sovereign bases, after a fortnight's delay, when some guy nips down to Smiths for half a ton of blu-tak?

It don't make sense

It's because Britain is trying to do more than it is willing to spend.

So there are two aircraft carriers which soaks up huge amounts of money and manpower. There are foreign bases all over the place, which ties up capability and manpower in defending them. There is the commitment to NATO's enhanced forward presence, which means deploying most of Britain's operational army capability to Estonia. There is the commitment to JEF, which uses up more capability.

And then there's procurement, where everything has to be designed bespoke for Britain at enormous cost and sometimes questionable efficacy.

interesting - genuinely - thankyou

It seems to me we need a rethink of our defence spend from first principles, in the light of all recent events, especially Ukraine, Iran etc

Non-negotiable: independent nuclear deterrent. We could usefully link with maybe Germany or Japan on creating missiles to carry our warheads so that we don't have to rely on the USA

Special forces

Military intelligence

All forms of autonomous drones, they are the future.....

But beyond that, we need to question everything. Do piloted jets have a future? Likewise tanks with drivers? Aircraft carriers? Maybe admit they were a terrible error? Or adapt them for robot jets

Robotics is about to render much present military thinking absurd, the way tanks rendered cavalry and trenches redundant, or the way machine guns and barbed wire overtook Napoleonic war

There's all of that, but then I think there's just a fundamental truth that for an island trading nation, no longer able to rely on leadership from the US, 2.x% of GDP is not enough to defend British interests.

Somewhere the money needs to be found to increase that to 4%.

We need to spend much more on Defence.

There is no getting around it.

And that means more spending cuts or tax rises.

There needs to be spending cuts AND tax rises.

Everyone needs to lose out with no exceptions.

Good luck with that on the front of a manifesto.

In some ways its easier to implement if everyone loses out as it reduces the resentment from those who lose out but see others not doing so.

We're all in this together was a good slogan from Cameron and Osborne - the problem was that it was only a slogan and many were given exceptions from the cuts and pay freezes.

Alexei Sayle, once said: 'Austerity is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton.'

Now that would have been a more appropriate slogan from Cameron and Osborne.

Similarly Gordon Brown's 'end to boom and bust' was supposed to mean that we could all get rich selling houses to each other.

I was having a chat this morning with a Conservative Party official who in the past was, shall we say, Reform curious.

Solidly back in the blue column. Couldn't stand Jenrick.

There is a real chance that Farage called it very wrong in taking in any old Tory waifs and strays. I think he knows it. The fire has gone from his belly.

I stand by my original thought, The Nadhim Zahawi reveal was the start of a long, slow collapse, followed by Kemi humiliating Jenrick and him having to crawl in on his belly and then the utterly cringe Braverman cuddling Nicotine Daddy photo
Theyve blown it and Nigel knows it

Labour minority, Tory opposition i think