Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):
The Secretary of State is making a good case. Does he agree that, as this extra money is available, we should ensure that more of it is spent on procuring weapons and military requirements here in the United Kingdom, because we cannot be properly defended unless we can make our own military vehicles, our own steel and our own explosives? We are short of capacity.
Grant Shapps (Secretary of State for Defence):
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is incredibly important that we developāor, rather, further developāour own domestic defence industrial base. That is one of the reasons why we have spoken about putting that industrial base on a war footing, and it is one of the reasons whyāthis is not, as has been suggested, some sort of cheap gibeāit is important that the Government, or indeed the Opposition if they want to be the Government, set out the path in order that that investment can take place. That base will not be able to invest unless it knows what is happening on a multi-year basis.
May 11, 2024
In his new book called āThe End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation.ā by Victor Davis Hanson he points out that well educated thinkers make strong men who destroy civilisations. Whilst those who are not believe their passive civilisation will last forever, or will be helped by a stronger ally, but are then wiped out. He cites numerous examples of this pattern as the benchmark for civilisations that are wiped off the face of the earth. Not necessarily that one civilisation is more advanced but that the other is more ideological.
And then we have Starmer.
May 11, 2024
Talking of war. Itās interesting there have been three types of civilisation on earth. The earth is still evenly divided between these cultures.
– Tribal
– Feudal
– Industrial
During colonialism Industrial cultures dominated tribal and feudal cultures. Today millions of people are immigrating from Tribal and Feudal cultures to Industrial cultures. Hence you hear tribal type laws raised such as children inheriting their fathers debts for slavery or feudal type laws about setting up local religious courts.
The Feudal civilisations started in Persia and were adopted by the mediterranean Greek, Roman, Christian and Muslim cultures. When the Industrial revolution hit the UK a new civilisation occurred based on honesty, trust, gentlemenās agreements, truth, science, democratic laws, financial law and market fairness.
Itās not a coincidence that some cultures donāt participate in the industrial culture or are caught committing crimes that appear more tribal or challenge industrial fairness laws such as fraud.
May 11, 2024
Very thought provoking.
And interesting that many feudal markers are apparent in the U.K. today. Except of course that Western Europe is not protected from invaders!
Plus feudalism doesnāt seem to me ( open to correction) to be all that different from tribalism bar in the internal organisation. Oh and I donāt think that chiefs own the land whereas feudal lords did?
Both tribalism and feudalism are said to encourage corruption ( no strong central government)
Banking was the key to industrialising. It used to be based on integrity and honesty etc. ideals that filtered into manufacturing. And are now apparently totally lost! š¤
May 11, 2024
It is being mooted that Lord Greensil Cameron is about to cave in to all demands by the EU over Gibralta. Why are the talks in secret without any oversight by MPs JR?
Is the Lord Greensil about to give away the airport which is the life line to Gibralta and the outside world? Again, what idiot thought it a good idea for Lord Greensil serial EU ratter to negotiate anything with the EU?
May 11, 2024
Samuel Huntington in his seminal 1996 work,’Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking Of the World Order’ wrote:
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.Westeners often forget this fact;non-westeners never do.”Quite so-and that superiority has now slipped away.
“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash,western belief in universality of western culture suffers three problems:it is false;it is immoral;it is dangerous.”-as we now see demonstrated right across the world.
Reply The technology we offered lifted living standards and improved lives. Democracy and the rule of law are prized by many.
May 11, 2024
Javelin,
Hennessy āRise and fall of the Great Powersā.
His conclusion is that military overstretch is the common reason for the fall.
May 11, 2024
This week’s Economist:”The liberal international order is slowing coming apart.Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible.”
See also the famous quip from Hemmingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ where one character asks the other how he went bust:
“Two ways.Gradually, then suddenly.”
May 11, 2024
And the energy to power our own domestic defence industrial base will rely on supplies from where? France, our recent invader?
Meanwhile our defence prospects are being jeopardized by this government’s approach to agriculture where food production is sacrficed in favour of re-wilding schemes. Evidentlly the government does consider adequacy of food supply, but routinely only every three years and this year is not one of them.
May 11, 2024
formula 57 : āMeanwhile our defence prospects are being jeopardized by this governmentās approach to agriculture where food production is sacrficed in favour of re-wilding schemesā:
Yes, the communists in academia, the civil service, Parliament and elsewhere intend us to both re-wild and end all shipping by 2050. See the Government funded UK FIRES Absolute Zero Report :
https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content
Now why would that be?
May 11, 2024
Read it. Not one jot of evidence that CO2 is a problem, but absolute certain belief in the need to reach net zero by any and every means. Total nutters and the need to get rid of the Uni Party and its supporting Civil Serpents becomes urgent and essential to retain any quality of life and avoid national bankruptcy. Plus starve all bodies like this of any funding to further promote its lies and propaganda! Reform!
May 11, 2024
Good morning.
And what war would that be ? The Crimean War ? Because you are spending money to fight a war that does not exist and never will. Not while the REAL WAR is happening right under your very noses.
I’ll give you a clue. Lenin referred to such people as, “Useful idiots.” And General Franco described them as his, “Fifth Column.” They do not have arms or smart weapons, but they are no less deadly. Acting to subvert our nations and, these aggressors come from different directions and have varying aims, except one ! The destruction of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. One such ‘actor’ has already succeeded with regards to Ulster.
May 11, 2024
+many.
Who will fight this war for traitorous dregs like Sunak, Hunt, Shapps, Cameron, Dowden? Not my family thank you.
May 11, 2024
‘It is incredibly important that we developāor, rather, further developāour own domestic defence industrial base.’. Oops, a faux pas dropped like a whopping clanger from someone trotting out meaningless, insincere drivel
When can we expect the demonisation of Starmer to begin? We all know he’s an existential threat. It is time those who the platform take aim as the real Starmer, the one that’s captured by his history not the one we see today who appears desperate to create a fresh image that appeals to the demo majority
May 11, 2024
Scrap net zero should be the first defence policy cost trillions benefit negative. Shapps read Business and Finance at Manchester Poly he was a dire energy secretary lasting just 3 months.
Multi-year basis surely means Starmerās Labour Party to decide for 5, 10 or perhaps 15+years after they extend voting to 12 year old children and postal family voting perhaps. I had to look up who was the Shadow Defence Sec. John Healey (social and political science Christs Camb. does not sound encouraging).
āScience has become something of an honorific term, and all sorts of disciplines that are quite unlike physics or chemistry are eager to call themselves āsciencesā.
A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that anything that calls itself a science probably isnāt.ā
John Searle
Just as anything that calls itself āThe Independent body of X,Y or Z probably isnāt.
Sunak, Cameron, Shapps or Starmer, Lammy and Healey god help us!
May 11, 2024
“We are short of capacity”. And why? Because of the priorities shown by successive failed Conservative governments over 14 years, culminating in Ms Truss’s reckless unfunded tax cuts and Mr Sunak’s spending of well over Ā£100 million to send precisely no one to Rwanda (except Home Secretaries wanting a photo op)
May 11, 2024
By definition a tax cut is not unfunded, it is merely the tax payer paying less out of his/her own pocket!
What is unfunded is extra expense over income which is why Governments, and people, borrow.
Not too difficult to understand.
May 11, 2024
Severely cut welfare and vastly reduce minimum wage tax payer subsidised immigrants = Government living within 46% of net tax payers means. If the Nation can’t afford it, cut it. I can’t keep living like this useless Tory Government. I’d be bankrupt after 14 years. Never had a surplus once.
We don’t have a housing, NHS waiting lists crisis. We have a mass immigration disaster where no one ever goes home or gets deported. 155 deported out of 25000 boat people last year. That’s the useless Tory’s after 14 years. No answers, just more and more tax for declining or non existent health and public services.
May 11, 2024
So let’s get this clear, Lemming. Extra money IS available to fund an increase in defence spending, Rwanda policy, Vlodomir Zelenskyy, project Covid etc. etc., but it WASn’t available for Liz Truss’s ‘unfunded tax cuts’, as you call them. I hope I’ve got this right.
If so, this must mean the Tory government is doing extremely well, for the country to be able to afford all this spending now, whereas we couldn’t fund tax cuts 18 months ago. Well done, Mr Sunak?
May 11, 2024
The tax cuts would have been self funding as people spend & invest the money so much better than governments do, which is not a high standard to beat. This as they waste at least 50% of it and most of the rest in invested in the wrong things like HS2, net zero, benefits for the feckless, hotels for illegal migrants, worthless degreesā¦
May 11, 2024
Ah, Ms Truss and her tax cuts! Fodder for years, even though they never took place.
May 11, 2024
Though be fair to Grant Shapps he did get 5 O levels, so two more than the disaster of John Major.
It seems this 5 Levels is quite sufficient to be Sec. for Defence, Energy security and net zero (a contradiction in the very job title), Business Sec., Home Sec., Party Chairman, International Dev Secā¦
May 11, 2024
Missed of Transport and Housing!
May 11, 2024
More obsession with qualifications irrelevant from umpteen years past, I only got O levels, never went to Uni and by most definitions have been successful.
I find your suggestion that because I only got O levels I am somehow inferior exceptionally rude and frankly rubbish.
May 11, 2024
Nigl,
Engineers are Lifelogicās equivalent of Platoās āGolden Soulsā. Except he would not like Plato because of associations with one of the letters in PPE.
Philosopher Kings would also be out of the question obviously.
May 11, 2024
Not all engineers & scientist at all. So many have been bought or go with the current group-thing on say Covid Vaccines, Net Zero, renewables and similar. The science is so often now bought by government, big pharma etc. See the excellent Death of Science Book Angus Dalgleish et al.
Sensible scientists are denied funding or get rubbished by people like Neil OāBrian MP.
May 11, 2024
Really, my impression is that all are valueless to LL, engineers and scientists included, unless they are blessed phycisists.
May 11, 2024
Sorry, I make no comment about you at all. Lots of very bright people leave school and universities or FE for all sorts of good reasons family illness, the need to earn moneyā¦ and many do very well indeed like one of my builders and even for those who are not bright it is certainly no shame on them anyway.
I was hopeless at distance running nothing I could do about that and not too hot at French either.
In the case of Major and Shapps they should surely never have been given the senior positions they did as they have both demonstrated in spades. Someone who failed maths O levels is not someone I would first turn to as a potential Chancellor of the Exchequer unless they had demonstrated amazing abilities later or I was very desperate indeed.
May 11, 2024
He’s very well qualified for any position in the Tory Uni Party, but is unemployable out here in the realmworld where you can’t survive totally on hot air and b/s!
May 11, 2024
The argument for greater national self sufficiency could, or perhaps should, be applied to more than just the defence industry. Food production would be a start. Instead we are fed the false story that the priority should be reduction of CO2. How many members of the governing/political class have stopped to think how the UK will support it’s current living standards or survive a war where sea lanes are compromised?
May 11, 2024
āmake our own military vehicles, our own steel and our own explosives?ā
Oh dear we cannot do that within out net zero laws can we. Think of the fossil fuels required. Then again perhaps we can just explode ārenewableā flour dust or sawdust and have battle fields with recharge stations for the electric tanks and aircraft? What is the plan Shapps & Cameron or Healey & Lammy?
May 11, 2024
Defending our homeland is far more important than just being able to fight somewhere else.
May 11, 2024
UK government policy is not to defend the homeland. Invaders are being escorted into the UK by the hundreds each day, many of whom aren’t coming here because they want to become British and adopt our way of life. We already have a sizeable enemy within our country, who want to destroy British institutions rather than cherish them. For those loyal to the country, they will be wondering for whose benefit they will heed the call to take up arms.
Investing in defence is needed, but a prerequisite is to rediscover pride in the country. If you aren’t prepared to take up arms in defence of the UK, then get out.
May 11, 2024
Agreed; although the lack of defence might not be the governmentās specific policy, their lack of control, ineptitude and sloppiness all contribute to the same woeful outcome. We need a capable British government to defend the UK, not the worthless shower currently in office.
May 13, 2024
Actually we are defending our homeland in the Ukraine. And defence vote was 11.2 per cent of GDP in the Korean War which was some way away. So we are just lying on our backs with our paws in the air
May 11, 2024
When the blast furnaces are closed in South Wales all quality steel required for military weapons will have to be imported. Steel for military use must be high grade. Indian Tata Steel is massively increasing production in India while closing the blast furnaces here.
I suggest to Grant Shapps that this IS some ‘sort of cheap jibe’.
May 11, 2024
You are absolutely correct Sir John.
We do need to be self reliant but, we need to go further. We need to be self reliant also in food supplies, energy as well as the military manufacturing capability.
Windmills and solar panels won’t be able to supply the energy needed to make the military equipment we may need.
We need to get our fingers out and build nuclear power stations.
I also worry about our enemies within too.
May 11, 2024
Our population exceeded our ability to be self- reliant centuries ago. As an island, fertile and reasonably supplied with minerals, we had a chance; but we blew it a long time ago. Now our position is basically hopeless.
May 11, 2024
Self sufficient in energy??? It’s the Tory plan to be relient on French and others energy at 25% regularly. Why? They’ve had 14 years to rectify this but refuse to do so. Net zero trumps everything so they refuse to build new nuclear and gas power stations and stops us taking back control of our fishing under their dopey one sided EU deal where they agreed Ā£37 billion for……. nothing. Anyone would think they want to stay hitched and reliant on the EU. The Snake withdrew the law to remove 4000 EU laws/regulations and signed us up to his Windsor betrayal.
May 11, 2024
Without the ability to make primary steel we are reduced to third world status
That of course is the target with net zero.
Also losing the ability to produce internal combustion engines does nothing to enhance our military capability. There’s not many charging points on the battle field.
May 11, 2024
+++
Enter the wooden tank!
ā No! No! Of course itās not a fire hazard!ā
May 11, 2024
Defence of the realm is governments first responsibility, so we could say, looking at excessively reduced personel, subcontracted recruitment, the application of diversity nonesense to it, expensive and incompetent purchasing of equipment that does not work, we can accurately say that our so called government has failed in its primary role. Compare the shabby treatment of military personel and families in terms of accommodation with that of illegal and at times criminal Channel crossers and you encalsulate government attitude at a glance. Whether you can expect an incoming Labour government to do any better is anyones guess.
It is not as if our prolific potholes have benefitted from defence penny pinching. They and every form of infrastructure inbetween enjoy equal neglect. , So appart from ensuring that our education, business, and banks are functionally tied and disabled by diversity, what precisely has 14 years of this government achieved. Perhaps it is to be able to historically state that they were not half as bad as what followed.
The electorate will shortly have the opportunity to take absolute control for one day. I hope they have the sense to support the fifty odd Conservatives left in Parliament and as many Reform candidates, who via their Contract offer the only truely Conservative solutions to our dire problems. Left and Right, except in extremis, have little relevance to these problems, only competence counts.
May 11, 2024
Iād be careful of this. U.K. defence procurement has been abysmal and certain well known sources of āU.K.ā (what is the definition?) supply have provided terrible service – inadequate, grossly overpriced and late. Look at the 2 aircraft carriers which brown had built in his neighbouring consistency. One doesnāt seem to work at all, neither has been equipped with the catapults which would enable them to fly multiple aircraft types, both are diesel not nuclear powered (they were ordered in the days when Labour were anti-nuclear – one of their many policies which has had huge long term costs for the Country).
We need to make sure we get as much bang for our buck as possible. As is well known, the number of uniformed service personnel is down to its lowest for a couple of hundred years (ie population adjusted at its lowest level ever by far). What is less well known is the ratio of civil servants to uniformed personnel is at its highest ever. Dominic Cummings has suggested that step one in resolving this is to fire 90% of those and start again with procurement. Letās look around the world for the best possible equipment at the best possible prices.
May 11, 2024
‘Industrial base’? What industrial base? What”s left of it after your party’s monetarist policy-led attack on it from the 1980s onward, I suppose. Now, whether we have a steel industry or not seems to largely depend on what a foreign owner decides. At least Shapps can see there’s a problem, though of course he can’t admit it in so many words.
May 11, 2024
Wasnāt he in charge of NZ before?
Imagine wanting to do away with all āemissionsā, presumably supporting the U.K. departure from steel manufacture then going on to being keen to import either weapons or steel.
All the āsave the planetā.
Whilst war around said planet is pumping out carbon by the cartload.
Not to mention actively destroying it!
This NZ business seems to be a conveniently moveable feast.
May 11, 2024
**
All to save
May 11, 2024
To cut ourselves off from the EU and with the need to import 50 per cent of food stuff was not very smart also with hardly any suitable British owned merchant ships anymore? – we’d need to be considering a lot more than procuring weapons and military equipment.
Reply We are still importing loads from the EU who remain keen to sell to us
May 11, 2024
Letās give even more money to the likes of BAE etc with tentacles in both parliament and the military through employing ex senior personnel.
Our defence industry/MOD have a history of egregious waste and spaffing vast amounts of money on āGucciā projects with the military wanting the most advanced toys.
Obviously if we can manufacture under licence etc all the better but just saying spend in the U.K. is a recipe for even more inefficiency.
I want effective procurement not waste that you and HMG have ignored for decades. If off the shelf kit, already developed and fit for purpose is available abroad so be it.
Billions spent over many years and not one acceptable ātank/armouredā vehicle produced is a metaphor for a wider malaise.
Jingoism from my pocket, no thank you Sir JR.
May 11, 2024
Perhaps Grant Shsapps could make a start by halving the number of Civil Servants in defense procurement. He could then follow that up by looking at every other part of the MOD and reduce numbers there. Particularly the number of Admirals and Generals should be reduced.
Our entire armed forces are now smaller than the US Marine Corp which has substantial aviation and marine elements. It would be interesting to compare the size of their support services with those of the MOD. Allowances must be made, of course, for some spill over from the other US services, but the comparison would be interesting. Shapps could also compare the French services as they are the closest to our own in size and type.
The MOD is so large that substantial cuts must be possible without reducing firepower.
May 11, 2024
Every select committee report on the MOD over the last decade at least has highlighted how most projects are late and over budget, indeed I think ānot fit for purposeā has been mentioned.
Not once has a Secretary of State ever accepted this and neither have spokespersons from the department who always push back in denial.
Sir JR seeks to perpetuate this.
May 11, 2024
Projects always overrun, due to unforeseen elements. The mistake is attempting to run a project on a shorter timescale than it needs. You need to experiment, review, then experiment and review again. Only commit to a design when the technical risk aspects have been covered.
The temptation is to commit to a design too early and then find it needs huge and expensive rework to rectify the things that are wrong.
May 11, 2024
āI absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend.ā ā But it is Conservative Government policy to focus on Net-Zero by off shoring as much UK production as possible.
This Conservative Government has removed speciality steel production that is needed for defence off shore. The Navyās new ships have been sent for production in Spain and Poland. The up-dates to the UKās tanks will be done in Germany. The UKās primary defence electronics is now in the hands of the French Government ā so on and so on. We the Conservative Government in our refusal to manage have neglected the duty of keeping the UK safe and secure, we have refused to allow the UK to be resilient and self-reliant.
Defending the UK is now the same as all other Woke worshipping endeavours of the UKās Destruction.
May 11, 2024
āJeremy Hunt tells voters to focus on Toriesā 14-year recordā
āAs much was clear on Friday as Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt both hit the airwaves from a Siemens(German not UK) factory in sunny Oxfordshire to own the positive economic signs.ā
14 years of tax growth
14 years of prolific uncontrolled expenditure
14 years on fighting the people, of destroying the economy, of not listening refusing to work with the people.
14 years of growing the State exponentially ā massive influx of State employees and the rise of the all dominate Quango.
14 years of promises to stop the criminal entry into the UK
Many years on the Net-Zero religion and ensuring the UK is disadvantaged in the World
Many years of taking back control getting Brexit done resulting in greater external control, EU payments, EU Laws accepted on mass. No democratic parliamentary legislators to be seen.
Or in other words 14 years of mounting failure
Is that a record to ensure re-election?
May 11, 2024
In addition to deindustrialising so we cannot make steel and munitions and hence military equipment :
How can it be safe to transition to intermittent and unreliable renewables and put all our energy eggs into one energy basket, electrification, when there is no plan or even an economic method to store grid-scale electricity ?
How can it be safe for China, a state described by our security services as āhostileā, to supply all our energy infrastructure ā wind turbines, solar panels, the metals and minerals for motors, generators, batteries and cabling?
How can it be safe for our energy infrastructure to be spread out over half the North Sea? How will our depleted armed services protect all the wind turbines and undersea cables from air and submarine drones? Or all the vast expanses of solar panels? No undersea cable or pipe is safe today, as seen with Nord Stream 2, and yet there is even a plan to import intermittent renewable electricity from North Africa over a distance of 2400 miles or even across the Atlantic.
How can it be safe to electrify our armed services ā aircraft, ships, tanks ? How will they be re-charged on the battlefield or at sea? Or in the air?
The purpose of the communist driven CAGW and its Net Zero āsolutionā is to destroy our economy and military capability.
May 11, 2024
PS :
No self-respecting or reputable physicist today believes that increasing atmospheric CO2 leads to additional GHG warming once they have read the work of Happer & Wijngaarden describing the phenomenon known as IR saturation. Even the captured Royal Society admits this IR saturation exists for CO2ās main, and hence most important, IR band.
The scam will end, and it will end very quickly once the Ā£ trillions of funding that is poured into far left university āclimate researchā ends, hopefully with a change of US President later this year.
May 11, 2024
OR
You are right. I think that when the scam ends there will be a massive backlash with squirming politicians, media and ‘scientists’ competing to cover their sorry asses. As for the BBC and their in house activists……..
May 11, 2024
+1
May 12, 2024
Lots of hand waving but where will you get the fuels from.
And how many more wars will need to be fought to preserve access to those fuels?
Despite decades of warnings on the consequences of selling off and giving away our industrial capabilities only now do you and the like minded majority on this blog start to ask “how can it be safe” .. really?
The locust consumer and weak, greedy politicians have achieved the destruction of our economics and defence capabilities, communism wasn’t needed for that.
May 11, 2024
I see the Government has been forced to debate the issue of giving Palestinians a route to getting a visa in the UK.
Obviously if Palestinians think itās OK to migrate to the UK then they are happy to give up on a Palestinian state and therefore could give up the idea right now and stop sending rockets into Israel.
It reminds me of the statement āI have lost this debateā.
May 11, 2024
Israel is intent on expelling the Palestinians from Gaza. They are doing this by making life there intolerable.
Israel believes that the UK would welcome some of these these people as they welcome a million foreigners to their country every year already. No doubt if Palestinians do come here they will be gruntled and overlook the support successive UK administrations have given to the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’.
May 11, 2024
Cameron has confirmed twice that U.K. personnel (based in both Ukraine and the U.K.) control the storm shadow missiles and will target (civilian) infrastructure inside Russia.
The U.K. has now been warned twice that if Storm Shadow hits infrastructure in Russia, Russia will feel free to retaliate against the U.K. āboth inside Ukraine and beyond its bordersā.
They are undertaking tactical nuclear exercised to dispel any doubt from the minds of narcs lie, Cameron and Johnson that Putin will defend Russia by all available means.
France, Poland, Italy and other countries, as a result, have confirmed they will not attack Russia.
When will the U.K. join that chorus? If necessary Cameron must be sacked!
May 11, 2024
+1 lynn
The despised Cameron should never have hired.
May 11, 2024
Lynne,
I despair at the utter madness of supporting and promoting corrupt Ukraine in war with Russia.
Cameron must be sacked. It is also worrying he is leading negotiations with EU over Gibralta! JR and colleagues must act, Cameron is a liability to our nation.
May 11, 2024
There are already French troops in Slavyansk in NW Donetsk which is on the M19 road to Karkiv. and is being used as a garrison for Ukrainian troops. The plan now is to increase their numbers to 1500. They are Foreign legion infantry, but they always are when French troops are sent abroad.
May 11, 2024
The French have denied that the Foreign Legion is involved, contradicting statements by Macron. The French even sent somebody to Putin[s inauguration to remove all doubt of their kow tow.
There are 30,000 foreign mercenaries, many English speaking. Hotels housing them have been successfully targeted by the Russians. One of the reasons why Macron was hysterical. So many individual French nationals killed.
May 11, 2024
I think Rishi Sunk and his colleagues are treading a difficult line between talking tough, and acting so tough they bring retribution on British forces somewhere. At the moment, it’s working. They’re benefiting from talking tough and not seeming to back down, which keeps the armchair warriors happy, and possibly even voting for them. They don’t want to go too far and provoke Moscow into, say, firing missiles at one of our military bases. They obviously wouldn’t want to go into a general election againt a background of military disaster. There again, they could use war as an excuse to delay the election, and so remain in power…
May 11, 2024
Happily most of our Storm Shadows were blown up in storage in Odessa a couple of weeks ago. The Russians may have saved us. Nevertheless Cameron is behaving as though he is high!
Itās very dangerous and he is making a fool of the U.K.
May 11, 2024
Lyn, BOF and Hope : Lordd Cameron is the real boss!
May 12, 2024
I see Dominic Cummings has now attacked the insane groupthink around the government that Zelensky is some kind of Churchillian hero defending freedom and democracy. Why do our rulers only get told the truth by someone they no longer pay to advise them?
May 11, 2024
During WW2, BOAC used unarmed Mosquito aircraft to fly across occupied territory to Sweden to obtain ball bearings needed for the war effort. Let’s learn from that and make everything we need in the UK.
On another tack, Biden is putting restrictions on arms sales to Israel because he does not like the way the weapons are being used. What is the point of buying weapons from America if you are not allowed to use them to best advantage? Best make them at home!