Understand the delay in appointing a new defence secretary is, in part, due to the propriety and ethics process in government.
No10 is required to submit its potential names for a fast-tracked check by the Cabinet Office to look for any skeletons. They can then be approached.
In this case, obviously, the delay may have been compounded by some people on the list not wanting to take on the job…
Apparently Number Ten has struggled to find MPs with the required number of skeletons in their closets, meaning Peter Mandelson is tipped for a return to the Cabinet.
It would actually be a good appointment, scandals notwithstanding.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
Not convinced. I'd say even a strategy of simply maintaining spending until maybe 2029 but spend that time planning and understanding better how tech is changing warfare before investing heavily in the 2030s will play out better than making medium and long term procurements now.
And ultimately if we think we should be spending 3.5% to deter Russia, China (and US? EU?), we should be spending at least that on managing and controlling AI which is the existential threat.
There's a lot that we need to spend in the short term just to stop from losing existing capability. The cheese-paring approach to defence spending that had been going on for at least three decades now has created so many problems that they're are masses of short-term cuts from the past that have stored up problems that are coming due now.
And there are major commitments that Britain is making that it doesn't have the capability to meet without a large expansion in defence spending now.
We're four years behind where we should be in preparing for future conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 should have been a major wake-up call and Britain is still dithering about what to do and delaying doing it.
Why do you think Britain had the luxury of waiting until 2030 to work out how to rebuild its defences when so many other countries in Europe have decided they needed to spend more years ago? Are the Germans, Danes, Poles and others just stupid and wasting their money?
Something needs to be done has been a winning argument forever. Planning before starting has been a winning strategy forever.
I think you're being complacent about the timescales faced and, also, there has been lots of planning, there's been a defence review, there's been loads of work in creating the defence investment plan. Britain doesn't need more planning. It has the plans. It needs to fund them.
If the plans don't take account of the last six months of the Ukraine war they are already out of date. And todays plans may well be completely out of date by 2030.
Yes, our inability to commit to large future commitments at this juncture is not necessarily the most terrible thing in the world.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
Not convinced. I'd say even a strategy of simply maintaining spending until maybe 2029 but spend that time planning and understanding better how tech is changing warfare before investing heavily in the 2030s will play out better than making medium and long term procurements now.
And ultimately if we think we should be spending 3.5% to deter Russia, China (and US? EU?), we should be spending at least that on managing and controlling AI which is the existential threat.
There's a lot that we need to spend in the short term just to stop from losing existing capability. The cheese-paring approach to defence spending that had been going on for at least three decades now has created so many problems that they're are masses of short-term cuts from the past that have stored up problems that are coming due now.
And there are major commitments that Britain is making that it doesn't have the capability to meet without a large expansion in defence spending now.
We're four years behind where we should be in preparing for future conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 should have been a major wake-up call and Britain is still dithering about what to do and delaying doing it.
Why do you think Britain had the luxury of waiting until 2030 to work out how to rebuild its defences when so many other countries in Europe have decided they needed to spend more years ago? Are the Germans, Danes, Poles and others just stupid and wasting their money?
Something needs to be done has been a winning argument forever. Planning before starting has been a winning strategy forever.
I think you're being complacent about the timescales faced and, also, there has been lots of planning, there's been a defence review, there's been loads of work in creating the defence investment plan. Britain doesn't need more planning. It has the plans. It needs to fund them.
If the plans don't take account of the last six months of the Ukraine war they are already out of date. And todays plans may well be completely out of date by 2030.
Yes, our inability to commit to large future commitments at this juncture is not necessarily the most terrible thing in the world.
If we are going to spend would suggest we spend on building capability more than building stuff.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
I’ve posted on here before that I think that to the likes of Starmer and Reeves defence is an anathema. They come from a world with very little real connection to the military either practically or lore.
I think they view the military in several negative ways with their political hinterlands where it’s a combination of a bad thing that does things like kill people and colonise and it’s full of chaps in flashy uniforms or scumbag squaddies, neither of which fit the bill in their circles.
I don’t think their innate “culture” can really comprehend the importance of defence other than strong words and flashy quick operations with special forces. I also think they sub-consciously think that something will come up, the US would step in or we would hold hands with our European allies and all would be ok.
Starmer’s words mean nothing - the in action about Russian shadow fleets for example.
I would think they have constantly hoping that at some point the defence review and budget for it would go away and they could get back to nice things like welfare, fairness, tax.
This could of course be grossly unfair on them but I don’t believe so.
I don't think that's right. I don't think Labour have even really been able to do the things that culturally they would like to do in government. They're timid and inept across the board.
And, culturally, you couldn't find a more pro-military party than the Tories, but look at the shambles they left behind in 2024, and there wasn't much sign of them turning things around in response to the 2022 invasion.
On defence Britain has yet to be shaken out of a complacency about the true state of its defence capability and its ability to measure up to the threat now faced.
We have the prancing around in fancy dress being shown live on BBC1 in two days.
Potemkin village in action.
You have a real issue with the ceremonial side of the Army. Did a guardsman in Hyde park run off without paying or something?
I have a real issue with any organisation I am funding which spends time and money on playing silly buggers instead of being capable of its primary purpose.
Though I dare say some think that the primary purpose of the British military is prancing around for royals and tourists.
That constant drilling does have a purpose: it reinforces the need to follow orders exactly and according to a precise timeline. There's a reason why basically every professional army at peace does similar.
Splendid training for when they need a massed volley to stop the French cuirassiers.
Which is great as French Cuirassiers do the same thing as the Household Cavalry for the French President. Game on.
Do we still not have a Defence Secretary? Someone should send him the names of Johnson’s last Cabinet. They’ll do and say anything for a Peerage and a salary.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
Not convinced. I'd say even a strategy of simply maintaining spending until maybe 2029 but spend that time planning and understanding better how tech is changing warfare before investing heavily in the 2030s will play out better than making medium and long term procurements now.
And ultimately if we think we should be spending 3.5% to deter Russia, China (and US? EU?), we should be spending at least that on managing and controlling AI which is the existential threat.
There's a lot that we need to spend in the short term just to stop from losing existing capability. The cheese-paring approach to defence spending that had been going on for at least three decades now has created so many problems that they're are masses of short-term cuts from the past that have stored up problems that are coming due now.
And there are major commitments that Britain is making that it doesn't have the capability to meet without a large expansion in defence spending now.
We're four years behind where we should be in preparing for future conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 should have been a major wake-up call and Britain is still dithering about what to do and delaying doing it.
Why do you think Britain had the luxury of waiting until 2030 to work out how to rebuild its defences when so many other countries in Europe have decided they needed to spend more years ago? Are the Germans, Danes, Poles and others just stupid and wasting their money?
Something needs to be done has been a winning argument forever. Planning before starting has been a winning strategy forever.
I think you're being complacent about the timescales faced and, also, there has been lots of planning, there's been a defence review, there's been loads of work in creating the defence investment plan. Britain doesn't need more planning. It has the plans. It needs to fund them.
If the plans don't take account of the last six months of the Ukraine war they are already out of date. And todays plans may well be completely out of date by 2030.
All plans are out of date before they are written the rate that things are changing. So why stop to make more plans?
People in the military are already working out how to cope with this. All sorts of buzzphrases, like change at the pace of innovation or somesuch.
There are lots of innovative defence companies in Britain wanting to do new things if only they would have a bit of funding to do so, and there's a battlefield in Ukraine to test it out on, but they are hamstrung, because there's no money from the government to help them out.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
Every army is always obsolete six months into a new war, but you need to have enough of an army to survive those six months while you work out what you need to do differently.
Britain doesn't have that. That's a good reason to spend more on what we can right now.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
Give 150,000 angry, unemployed, young men a rifle and point them at Moscow, based on the NATO border with access to attractive women and tax free cars. Off benefits and into the defence budget. It’s how we always used to do it.
Edit - actually it’s 2026 and they’re a dab hand with a PlayStation. Give them a drone controller.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
I’ve posted on here before that I think that to the likes of Starmer and Reeves defence is an anathema. They come from a world with very little real connection to the military either practically or lore.
I think they view the military in several negative ways with their political hinterlands where it’s a combination of a bad thing that does things like kill people and colonise and it’s full of chaps in flashy uniforms or scumbag squaddies, neither of which fit the bill in their circles.
I don’t think their innate “culture” can really comprehend the importance of defence other than strong words and flashy quick operations with special forces. I also think they sub-consciously think that something will come up, the US would step in or we would hold hands with our European allies and all would be ok.
Starmer’s words mean nothing - the in action about Russian shadow fleets for example.
I would think they have constantly hoping that at some point the defence review and budget for it would go away and they could get back to nice things like welfare, fairness, tax.
This could of course be grossly unfair on them but I don’t believe so.
I don't think that's right. I don't think Labour have even really been able to do the things that culturally they would like to do in government. They're timid and inept across the board.
And, culturally, you couldn't find a more pro-military party than the Tories, but look at the shambles they left behind in 2024, and there wasn't much sign of them turning things around in response to the 2022 invasion.
On defence Britain has yet to be shaken out of a complacency about the true state of its defence capability and its ability to measure up to the threat now faced.
We have the prancing around in fancy dress being shown live on BBC1 in two days.
Potemkin village in action.
You have a real issue with the ceremonial side of the Army. Did a guardsman in Hyde park run off without paying or something?
I have a real issue with any organisation I am funding which spends time and money on playing silly buggers instead of being capable of its primary purpose.
Though I dare say some think that the primary purpose of the British military is prancing around for royals and tourists.
That constant drilling does have a purpose: it reinforces the need to follow orders exactly and according to a precise timeline. There's a reason why basically every professional army at peace does similar.
Splendid training for when they need a massed volley to stop the French cuirassiers.
Which is great as French Cuirassiers do the same thing as the Household Cavalry for the French President. Game on.
Michel Roux Jr related how on his first day of French national service, they recognised his name and shoved him straight into the presidential kitchens.
The thing I don’t understand is how obvious this was. Reeves and Starmer are just absolutely crap at basic politics. You can’t come out and wax lyrical about defence being “the greatest priority” and then fail to deliver
O/T I saw that there is a very well received play in London at the moment about the saga with the Number 11 private Urinal.
Reeves made a thing about having it removed for some sort of women bollocks and then it turned out it couldn’t be removed due to building listing and the fact that it was considered of great historical importance.
Sort of sums up the gov, big talk, pointless gestures, foiled by reality.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Starmer can appoint himself Defence Secretary. Might be his only option
It’s one of the few enshrined in legislation via the defence council, so we do need one. (Most legislation just says “the Secretary of State and it could be any of them).
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
I’ve posted on here before that I think that to the likes of Starmer and Reeves defence is an anathema. They come from a world with very little real connection to the military either practically or lore.
I think they view the military in several negative ways with their political hinterlands where it’s a combination of a bad thing that does things like kill people and colonise and it’s full of chaps in flashy uniforms or scumbag squaddies, neither of which fit the bill in their circles.
I don’t think their innate “culture” can really comprehend the importance of defence other than strong words and flashy quick operations with special forces. I also think they sub-consciously think that something will come up, the US would step in or we would hold hands with our European allies and all would be ok.
Starmer’s words mean nothing - the in action about Russian shadow fleets for example.
I would think they have constantly hoping that at some point the defence review and budget for it would go away and they could get back to nice things like welfare, fairness, tax.
This could of course be grossly unfair on them but I don’t believe so.
I don't think that's right. I don't think Labour have even really been able to do the things that culturally they would like to do in government. They're timid and inept across the board.
And, culturally, you couldn't find a more pro-military party than the Tories, but look at the shambles they left behind in 2024, and there wasn't much sign of them turning things around in response to the 2022 invasion.
On defence Britain has yet to be shaken out of a complacency about the true state of its defence capability and its ability to measure up to the threat now faced.
We have the prancing around in fancy dress being shown live on BBC1 in two days.
Potemkin village in action.
You have a real issue with the ceremonial side of the Army. Did a guardsman in Hyde park run off without paying or something?
I have a real issue with any organisation I am funding which spends time and money on playing silly buggers instead of being capable of its primary purpose.
Though I dare say some think that the primary purpose of the British military is prancing around for royals and tourists.
That constant drilling does have a purpose: it reinforces the need to follow orders exactly and according to a precise timeline. There's a reason why basically every professional army at peace does similar.
Splendid training for when they need a massed volley to stop the French cuirassiers.
Which is great as French Cuirassiers do the same thing as the Household Cavalry for the French President. Game on.
Michel Roux Jr related how on his first day of French national service, they recognised his name and shoved him straight into the presidential kitchens.
Sensible, as Napoleon might have said, “an army marches on its stomach”.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
If you asked 50 defence experts what to spend extra money on we'd probably get 20-30 different answers. I'm not sure it particularly matters whether we spend 2.4% or 2.5% or whatever the difference is on defence in the next few years.
What we need to do is re-imagine what defence looks like and come up with a coherent strategy that fits for the next decade and beyond, not the present and certainly not the past.
We need to do the latter and we need to spend more on defence now. We don't have the luxury of taking time to come up with a perfect defence plan. We need more capability asap.
Countries like Poland, Germany and Denmark are not messing around dithering and doing nothing. They're getting on with it. Britain needs to do the same.
And, yes, the difference between 2.6% and 2.68% is neither here nor there. The countries in Europe who are serious about defence are at, or heading to, 3.5+% before the end of this Parliament. Serious amounts of extra money, and serious amounts of extra capability as a result. Britain needs to do the same.
I’ve posted on here before that I think that to the likes of Starmer and Reeves defence is an anathema. They come from a world with very little real connection to the military either practically or lore.
I think they view the military in several negative ways with their political hinterlands where it’s a combination of a bad thing that does things like kill people and colonise and it’s full of chaps in flashy uniforms or scumbag squaddies, neither of which fit the bill in their circles.
I don’t think their innate “culture” can really comprehend the importance of defence other than strong words and flashy quick operations with special forces. I also think they sub-consciously think that something will come up, the US would step in or we would hold hands with our European allies and all would be ok.
Starmer’s words mean nothing - the in action about Russian shadow fleets for example.
I would think they have constantly hoping that at some point the defence review and budget for it would go away and they could get back to nice things like welfare, fairness, tax.
This could of course be grossly unfair on them but I don’t believe so.
I don't think that's right. I don't think Labour have even really been able to do the things that culturally they would like to do in government. They're timid and inept across the board.
And, culturally, you couldn't find a more pro-military party than the Tories, but look at the shambles they left behind in 2024, and there wasn't much sign of them turning things around in response to the 2022 invasion.
On defence Britain has yet to be shaken out of a complacency about the true state of its defence capability and its ability to measure up to the threat now faced.
We have the prancing around in fancy dress being shown live on BBC1 in two days.
Potemkin village in action.
You have a real issue with the ceremonial side of the Army. Did a guardsman in Hyde park run off without paying or something?
I have a real issue with any organisation I am funding which spends time and money on playing silly buggers instead of being capable of its primary purpose.
Though I dare say some think that the primary purpose of the British military is prancing around for royals and tourists.
That constant drilling does have a purpose: it reinforces the need to follow orders exactly and according to a precise timeline. There's a reason why basically every professional army at peace does similar.
Splendid training for when they need a massed volley to stop the French cuirassiers.
Which is great as French Cuirassiers do the same thing as the Household Cavalry for the French President. Game on.
Michel Roux Jr related how on his first day of French national service, they recognised his name and shoved him straight into the presidential kitchens.
Sensible, as Napoleon might have said, “an army marches on its stomach”.
That’s why the French can’t march very far. Our army uses its feet.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
A randomly selected World Cup might be a heck of a lot of fun.
O/T I saw that there is a very well received play in London at the moment about the saga with the Number 11 private Urinal.
Reeves made a thing about having it removed for some sort of women bollocks and then it turned out it couldn’t be removed due to building listing and the fact that it was considered of great historical importance.
Sort of sums up the gov, big talk, pointless gestures, foiled by reality.
Its quite funny really that she cannot refurbish a loo, while Trump can demolish a whole wing, pave the Rose Garden, stick baroque gold leaf everywhere and put a circus stage on the front lawn.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. Would finally get us a decent public health system.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
O/T I saw that there is a very well received play in London at the moment about the saga with the Number 11 private Urinal.
Reeves made a thing about having it removed for some sort of women bollocks and then it turned out it couldn’t be removed due to building listing and the fact that it was considered of great historical importance.
Sort of sums up the gov, big talk, pointless gestures, foiled by reality.
Its quite funny really that she cannot, while Trump can demolish a whole wing, pave the Rose Garden, stick baroque gold leaf everywhere and put a circus stage on the front lawn.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
I'd go for Switzerland or Norway. Good levels of fitness and enough play.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
But I'm not making inferences here - I think there are genuinely government-set quotas for how many players in the cricket and rugby teams have to be black. But not apparently how many footballers have to be white.
Al Carns resigns now too. The second defence minister to go on principle.
Will the chiefs follow him if Starmer doesn’t reopen the DIP?
It would be genuinely disgraceful if they did. Unelected public servants shouldn’t play politics with defence, the brass know what they signed up for.
They can lay it out to Starmer in the starkest terms, but no more.
They can and should resign if they are no longer willing to serve, as can civil servants. But they should also just leave and not say another word until their notice period is over and they are members of the public.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
Strictly speaking she says the Politics UK tweet talking about 'coalitions' was bullshit, but no one batted an eyelid about my perfectly reasonable interpretation of what she said in response to a question, which she has now cut out of her video, until people started giving her grief about it. Seems inconceivable that she would allow a rainbow lefty coalition rather than support an agreed conservative agenda with Reform. If she'd said 'we'll let the left in because Farage wants to nationalise British Steel', I dare say everyone would also have gone bananas. As I say in my column, this is a tedious subject. THERE WON'T BE A DEAL BECAUSE NO ONE ON THE RIGHT WANTS ONE BUT IF THERE NEEDS TO BE A DEAL THERE WILL BE A DEAL. THE END
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
But I'm not making inferences here - I think there are genuinely government-set quotas for how many players in the cricket and rugby teams have to be black. But not apparently how many footballers have to be white.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
But I'm not making inferences here - I think there are genuinely government-set quotas for how many players in the cricket and rugby teams have to be black. But not apparently how many footballers have to be white.
Yes because even disregarding the historical context of apartheid, and cricket and rugby as icons of apartheid, statistically it is perfectly normal for an 11 person SA team not to have any whites involved.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Today I learned that Rob Key doesn't drink alcohol.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Today I learned that Rob Key doesn't drink alcohol.
I don’t think it matters does it? I have seen no suggestion Stokes or Atkinson did anything dreadful through drunkenness. They might as well have been on orange juice.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
From Cairns resignation letter - this "failure of seriousness".
Ouch!
First Starmer is described as "unable", then Reeves as "unwilling" now a "failure of seriousness" re not just defence but the way the government approaches everything.
Starmer now has his legacy anyway, whenever he goes.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Today I learned that Rob Key doesn't drink alcohol.
I don’t think it matters does it? I have seen no suggestion Stokes or Atkinson did anything dreadful through drunkenness. They might as well have been on orange juice.
I have found some teetotallers to be very prissy.
Although I have never drunk the devil's buttermilk I have bought lots and lots for other people to drink.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Why not 0.5p on income tax? The whole obsession with exact defence budgets is getting farcical.
The biggest threat to our security is AI. We are not bothering to deal with that threat at all because it is too complicated and we like what AI can deliver in the present.
My conclusion is no-one really cares about future security, they care about being seen to be on one side of the debate or not.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
The Admiral Anson approach. Use pensioners as cannon fodder, a great British tradition.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Why not 0.5p on income tax? The whole obsession with exact defence budgets is getting farcical.
The biggest threat to our security is AI. We are not bothering to deal with that threat at all because it is too complicated and we like what AI can deliver in the present.
My conclusion is no-one really cares about future security, they care about being seen to on one side of the debate or not.
Carns isn't that big a threat really....oh...I see what you mean.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Well maybe we start by stopping all PIP payments to people with household income over £100k per year.
Astonishingly there are 200,000 such people getting PIP.
I would go much further - just for starters no welfare (exc state pension) to anyone earning over £50k.
If anyone has complex needs requiring expensive equipment etc the Govt purchases the equipment for them.
No cash handed to anyone earning over £50k. Not one penny.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
The purpose of the England Cricket team is to win cricket matches. Currently, Stokes is essential to that as a captain and as a player. Key and Baz are not.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
Starmer's only possible legacy, Assisted Dying, hoves back into view
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
Strictly speaking she says the Politics UK tweet talking about 'coalitions' was bullshit, but no one batted an eyelid about my perfectly reasonable interpretation of what she said in response to a question, which she has now cut out of her video, until people started giving her grief about it. Seems inconceivable that she would allow a rainbow lefty coalition rather than support an agreed conservative agenda with Reform. If she'd said 'we'll let the left in because Farage wants to nationalise British Steel', I dare say everyone would also have gone bananas. As I say in my column, this is a tedious subject. THERE WON'T BE A DEAL BECAUSE NO ONE ON THE RIGHT WANTS ONE BUT IF THERE NEEDS TO BE A DEAL THERE WILL BE A DEAL. THE END
NB: If I were Chancellor (I am available Your Majesty) I would actually welcome check-mating all Departments into fixing their budget to a given percentage of GDP. Makes it a lot easier to do cuts during a recession…
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Why not 0.5p on income tax? The whole obsession with exact defence budgets is getting farcical.
The biggest threat to our security is AI. We are not bothering to deal with that threat at all because it is too complicated and we like what AI can deliver in the present.
My conclusion is no-one really cares about future security, they care about being seen to be on one side of the debate or not.
It's the defence as a percentage of GDP that annoys me. That's not how tanks and warships are priced – things cost what they cost.
Even worse is adopting the Osborne trick of padding the defence budget with things that used to be outside it, such as pensions, the nuclear deterrent, and now intelligence.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
You want a country where a random set of men aged 17-40 are nearer to 17 than 40, so that rules out most Western nations and probably South America too.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Well maybe we start by stopping all PIP payments to people with household income over £100k per year.
Astonishingly there are 200,000 such people getting PIP.
I would go much further - just for starters no welfare (exc state pension) to anyone earning over £50k.
If anyone has complex needs requiring expensive equipment etc the Govt purchases the equipment for them.
No cash handed to anyone earning over £50k. Not one penny.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
The purpose of the England Cricket team is to win cricket matches. Currently, Stokes is essential to that as a captain and as a player. Key and Baz are not.
Nothing else matters.
Since the start of 2024 in 24 tests he averages 27 with the bat and takes 2 wickets per test. He is replaceable nowadays even if a legend at his best.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Well maybe we start by stopping all PIP payments to people with household income over £100k per year.
Astonishingly there are 200,000 such people getting PIP.
I would go much further - just for starters no welfare (exc state pension) to anyone earning over £50k.
If anyone has complex needs requiring expensive equipment etc the Govt purchases the equipment for them.
No cash handed to anyone earning over £50k. Not one penny.
Free childcare is stopped at £100,000 for either parent, so we subsidise households on up to £200,000 a year. And people get worked up over the two-child cap.
Comments
Watch the full interview
https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/2065056435201872349
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
People in the military are already working out how to cope with this. All sorts of buzzphrases, like change at the pace of innovation or somesuch.
There are lots of innovative defence companies in Britain wanting to do new things if only they would have a bit of funding to do so, and there's a battlefield in Ukraine to test it out on, but they are hamstrung, because there's no money from the government to help them out.
The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
... the final curtain
Al Carns resigns now too. The second defence minister to go on principle.
Will the chiefs follow him if Starmer doesn’t reopen the DIP?
Britain doesn't have that. That's a good reason to spend more on what we can right now.
Edit - actually it’s 2026 and they’re a dab hand with a PlayStation. Give them a drone controller.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2026/06/11/rob-key-refuses-back-ben-stokes-captain-considers-booze-ban/
Although the job had different parameters then.
Reeves made a thing about having it removed for some sort of women bollocks and then it turned out it couldn’t be removed due to building listing and the fact that it was considered of great historical importance.
Sort of sums up the gov, big talk, pointless gestures, foiled by reality.
Would save a ministerial salary.
BREAKING: Al Carns suggests he will resign as Armed Forces Minister if Keir Starmer doesn't increase defence spending
When asked if he thinks he will be sacked for not seeking No 10 permission for the interview, he says:
"What will happen, will happen"
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
They can lay it out to Starmer in the starkest terms, but no more.
https://x.com/jessicaelgot/status/2065148308834685298
Makes you proud to be British.
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties.
That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt.
Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly.
Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating.
The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking
NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
https://x.com/ShippersUnbound/status/2065088777895202897
Strictly speaking she says the Politics UK tweet talking about 'coalitions' was bullshit, but no one batted an eyelid about my perfectly reasonable interpretation of what she said in response to a question, which she has now cut out of her video, until people started giving her grief about it. Seems inconceivable that she would allow a rainbow lefty coalition rather than support an agreed conservative agenda with Reform. If she'd said 'we'll let the left in because Farage wants to nationalise British Steel', I dare say everyone would also have gone bananas. As I say in my column, this is a tedious subject. THERE WON'T BE A DEAL BECAUSE NO ONE ON THE RIGHT WANTS ONE BUT IF THERE NEEDS TO BE A DEAL THERE WILL BE A DEAL. THE END
https://x.com/ShippersUnbound/status/2065093214223167514
@chadbourn.bsky.social
Trump on Iran: “There could be a signing over the weekend in Europe.
“I won't be able to be there, but JD Vance will be there.”
https://bsky.app/profile/chadbourn.bsky.social/post/3mnzyggoxfs2b
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
Breathtaking isn't it.
Al Carns resigns as armed forces minister hours after defence secretary steps down - BBC News
Apologies if previously posted just appeared on BBC news
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
How long will Starmer last could be an interesting bet ?
Ouch!
First Starmer is described as "unable", then Reeves as "unwilling" now a "failure of seriousness" re not just defence but the way the government approaches everything.
Starmer now has his legacy anyway, whenever he goes.
Although I have never drunk the devil's buttermilk I have bought lots and lots for other people to drink.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
The biggest threat to our security is AI. We are not bothering to deal with that threat at all because it is too complicated and we like what AI can deliver in the present.
My conclusion is no-one really cares about future security, they care about being seen to be on one side of the debate or not.
https://www.lookandlearn.com/blog/14417/ansons-nightmare-voyage-turned-to-triumph-and-riches/#:~:text=Not one of the unfortunate,these were killed in action.
No correction needs to be issued here.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZcQS8YiG-5/?igsh=dG5jcnA5YWxuazd3
Astonishingly there are 200,000 such people getting PIP.
I would go much further - just for starters no welfare (exc state pension) to anyone earning over £50k.
If anyone has complex needs requiring expensive equipment etc the Govt purchases the equipment for them.
No cash handed to anyone earning over £50k. Not one penny.
Nothing else matters.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9837439-i-have-divided-politicians-into-two-categories-the-signposts-and
Even worse is adopting the Osborne trick of padding the defence budget with things that used to be outside it, such as pensions, the nuclear deterrent, and now intelligence.
Chris Mason
Political editor
What a bizarre evening.
At half seven I interviewed Al Carns, as a serving defence minister.
No sooner had we fed our video into our systems here, and he’d packed it in and left the government."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cgqeg09p3p1t
Is the whole team walking out?
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36%
Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3%
Sympathise, should not compensate: 13%
Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
Don't know/have not heard about them: 41%
https://bsky.app/profile/yougov.co.uk/post/3mnzl75dk3s2m