The government thinks it would be a good idea to have 12 more submarines and 6 new UK factories to make ammunition and explosives. They think the UK does have to take the Russian threat more seriously and commit to European defence.
They refuse, however, to spell out how they would pay for all this. The budget rises modestly this Parliament to 2.5% of GDP, to be part paid for by cuts in overseas aid. There is no firm promise to increase it to 3%, not even by 2034, yet the Review says it has to go to that level. The new submarines would be rolled out one every 18 months taking two decades to complete.
It is not in the UK’s interest to get into a war with Russia. No sensible UK government would commit us to one unless we decided to join a general NATO response to some future Russian aggression which was against a NATO state. The states most directly potentially affected by Russian aggression as with Ukraine today lie much closer to the Russian border .
The UK does need to strengthen the defence of our home islands to warn any possible future enemy off any idea of attacking us. This needs the extra spend identified on good anti missile and drone protection, on a stronger navy and airforce and an additional way of delivering our nuclear deterrent.
The defence review is being sold by the government as a jobs programme for the UK. Of course the UK should make more of its weapons at home. It is also going to need a stronger UK domestic steel, petrochemical and chemical industry to become more self sufficient. This requires an urgent change of energy policy.
June 3, 2025
Good morning.
This is actually a very good idea. The reason for this is, it is very easy for builders to lose skills and knowledge in specialist areas. Having a rolling system provides job security and helps to maintain defence ability.
Ah ! Shades of 1939 me thinks 😉
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-poland-strengthen-foreign-policy-security-and-defence-cooperation
June 3, 2025
There is absolutely no way they will be able to roll out a new submarine every 18 months. After the usual massive cost overruns and delays and cuts to the programme we’ll be lucky to get 2 built in three decades never mind 6 in two.
June 3, 2025
Do you live near a nuclear installation, Mark? Would you like to move to such an area, so you could be a target in the event of the war you’re evoking with your ‘shades of 1939’? I don’t think you would. So why do you reckon it’s OK for you to put so many of us at risk?
June 3, 2025
Don’t worry Richard, it probably won’t happen. The Treasury will no doubt decide British made is too expensive and give the contracts to the EU or China.
June 3, 2025
What on earth are you talking about ?
June 3, 2025
and more to the point it is about time somebody British, preferably with some background, publicly stated for Putin’s group of bullish outspoken lackeys, that they are assured mutual nuclear destruction leaving enormous areas unliveable for decades. In short ‘ shut the f.up you moron’
June 3, 2025
Indeed. The main worry is that defence procurement in the UK seems to be appallingly run and has been for all my life so far. Endless appalling decision and vast misdirected financial waste. This plus we have a particularly (inept ed)government in charge with a huge majority thank to the vast serial betrayals of Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak.
We have (poor Ministers ed) in charge at No 100,(10 ed)at the Home office, the Foreign Office and especially at Energy. Growth, and indeed the defence of the nation, is totally incompatible with the lunacy of May and Miliband’s insanity of net zero and their so called “renewables” religion. “Renewables” actually come from nuclear fusion on the sun, the earths rotation for Tidal or (for geothermal) nuclear activity in the core of the earth.
June 3, 2025
Agreed. If the government really, really believes in and endorses the SDR then it needs to ensure that the rest of government policy is compatible with it. Manifestly it is not. Save the UK must come before Save the planet. Support investment must come before screw investors. Etc
June 3, 2025
So more two tier justice and attacks of free speech from our judiciary with judges inventing a new blasphemy law. I assume with the approval of Starmer and Lord Hermer for political reasons? Meanwhile the Batley Grammar school teacher is still in hiding.
Plus virtually nothing is done about the “grooming” rape and torture gangs which still continues. All about government priorities I assume?
June 3, 2025
And the Iranian immigrant who caused carnage on the A1, wrecking five police cars and injuring seven officers. Is given 14 months detention.
Meanwhile Lucy Connelly continues to serve her 30 month sentence for posting an unpleasant tweet, which she later deleted.
Two Tier justice at it’s finest ……….
June 3, 2025
Defence costs what our needs add up to in total.
Aiming to hit a specific GDP level is focused on the wrong target.
June 3, 2025
Quite, a nonsense yardstick. It was only intended to give a rough guide for comparing one state with another, not a target ‘nevermind the outcome’. This is how government wastes our money; we so often hear the lazy response from a minister, both parties, responding to a question on a pressing issue simply stating ‘we have increased the spending budget on this issue by x%’, as though that is the answer. NO, it’s what is DONE with that money that counts!
June 3, 2025
Agreed. This continual reference to spending a % of GDP is a meaningless gesture. Spending budgets are spent with cash not percentages.
June 3, 2025
It is meaningful given the year-to-year budget increase, the inflation, and to give the public an idea of what the budget is spent on.
Given that within the public there are people who mix up millions, billions, if not trillions, percentages make sense. If one is keen on cash value, it should be a doodle to go from % to £.
It can also be an easy way to compare what different countries proportionately spend on, say, defence, education, health, etc, specially with different currencies.
That’s why the PotUS insists on given %s and not cash values.
June 3, 2025
How does giving a % of GDP for defence spending give the public an idea of what it is spent on?
June 4, 2025
If ‘the public’ really wanted to know what the defence budget is spent on, they would simply have to read the various documents published by the Government, Parliament, Defence Committee, …
– The ‘Strategic Defence Review 2025 – Making Britain Safer, secure at home, strong abroad’ is available on assets.publishing.service.gov.uk 144 pp.
– briefing.files.parliament.uk 30/05/2025 ‘The forthcoming Strategic Defence Review’, 35 pp.
– commonslibrary.parliament.uk 28/05/2025 ‘UK defence spending’, 33 pp.
– commonslibrary.parliament.uk 22/08/2024 ‘The cost of the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent’, 30 pp.
As for the ‘tools’ (something that some people are always keen on knowing the details about)
– nao.org.uk ‘The Equipment Plan 2023-2033’, 52 pp (NB being revised).
But obviously it is soooooo much easier to write some sweet nothings on Sir John’s blog, isn’t it BT?
As an aside: how comes that this blog attracts such a number of fuddy-duddies who day after day after day can only show how useless they are at finding information and that whatever the topics?
Reply So why do you bother to come on this site as you so scorn most of us on it?
June 4, 2025
If you were a bitty more active on this blog and commenting more on the type of idiocies that often appear here maybe I would not need to comment …
June 4, 2025
Oh dear hefner.
Another of your posts where you tell us how clever you are and everyone who posts on here isn’t anywhere near as brilliant as you.
Useless fuddy duddies we all are apparently.
Can I suggest you go and get some professional help for your superiority complex.
There os a cure.
Don’t despair hefner.
June 3, 2025
Indeed, I assume they will include the vast cost of their appalling Chagos deal within this % spend on “defence”? Yet this deal surely makes the UK rather less safe and not more and with far less money to spend on real defence systems!
June 10, 2025
Cameron’s trick when cutting defence spending to the then risible level of Germany (which now spends much more than UK) was to add service pensions to the calculation of % of GDP. Technically it is allowed but politics is all about changing impressions so he was able to cut defence while keeping defence % of GDP just within guidelines.
June 3, 2025
If they want to ‘compare’ country with country, they need to use ppp comparisons.
How much do we have to spend to equal The Russian Federations military output?
Now that might help the PM to stop threatening war.
Unlike the pandemic and global warming scams, the War Threat is like the illegal migration scam in that it can come true.
June 3, 2025
Indeed and it will be far cheaper for the Russians as they have loads of cheap energy and no mad net zero insanity. It take the UK at least ten years to get permission to build a runway or a nuclear power plant! Thanks to natural England endless other obstructive QUANGOa and other endless legal and political obstructions & challenges!
June 3, 2025
To me it would appear to be a review to undermine the whole ethos of NATO, especially when the wording is the defence of Europe.
NATO was/is a mutual defence pact, the fact that some nations laze around and sponge of others when it comes to commitment and expenditure doesn’t mean it should be taken off the table. The highlighting of one nation paying the bulk of the bills and committing the bulk of the men and equipment, when they have a growing threat on their western flank so it would be nice for some of the others to step up. Wasn’t them deserting the project but was saying come on guys you can’t keep sponging and taking without contributing.
Two Tier Kier (also called PM Starmer) who doesn’t seem to have an honest streak anywhere in his bones should come clean he wants full integration with the EU with himself as President, to create a Marxist State to merge with the others on this Planet. As such NATO has to be sidelined.
Some think this outfit in power is a bit short on thinking, I would suspect it’s the opposite they are manipulative with an obsession. Yes, they want change, the change to a dictatorship. Why else would the keep fighting the people.
June 3, 2025
So short in thinking proven.
June 3, 2025
More waffle from an out of touch PM. Why do we need 12 more submarines
I was a submariner and know how valuable they van be especially for intelligence gathering and to a limited degree for offensive actions.
I would have thought priority would be air defence and homeland security.
We can’t expect any sense from a bunch of lawyers and PPE graduates.
We will have to import all the materials and as 2TK has signed us up to the Brussels dads army no doubt they will be given priority in tendering for the work.
June 3, 2025
That’s the objective from 2TK, to import the raw materials and many key parts from the EU to make us dependent on them. Most of this increased spending will go to European defence industries.
PS, has BAe Systems put forward a replacement for the Hawk yet? Or will we buy the Italian trainer?
June 3, 2025
90% of UK’s trade goes by sea. UK can be crippled by parking a few submarines in the south west approaches. Insurance rates would soar and merchant shipping would just stop. The best anti-submarine platform is another submarine.
June 3, 2025
Why do you say a submarine is the best anti-submarine platform? – there is only one instance of a submarine being sunk by another while submerged (U-864 by HMS Venture in WW2), verses many sinkings by aircraft and surface vessels.
June 10, 2025
We haven’t had a hot war involving submarines since the Korean War 1950-53. Submarines have changed enormously since then. Modern SSNs have long endurance without surfacing, extreme quietness and are very hard to detect by passive sonar. Surface ships are noisy and easily detected by a quiet submarine. A surface ship’s hull mounted active sonar is an invitation to be torpedoed. Surface ship hull mounted passive sonar is itself limited by its platform’s own noise and by the thermocline. Water temperature decreases rapidly from the mixed upper layer of the ocean to much colder deep water in the thermocline. This means that acoustic waves cannot travel to the ship’s sonar on the surface from all points below the surface. there is a shadow zone in which no ship sonar can detect a submarine. One solution is the towed array sonar TAS, which is a very long cable trailing astern and lowerd to the cold water zone from where it can receive noise from a submarine. TAS greatly restricts a ship’s ability to manoeuvre and restricts its speed to a few knots, rendering it highly vulnerable to attack by any means and, obviously, reventing it doing any of the other myriad tasks required of surface ships. there are other methods (aircraft etc) but all with their own disadvantages. A modern submarine has none of these issues.
June 3, 2025
The solution is to onshore most things, food, steel energy etc.
Surely we are not planning another Battle of the Atlantic?
June 3, 2025
With battery powered “sustainable” ships, tanks, jets, submarines… I assume (so as to keep deluded Greta, May, King Charles and Miliband happy).
June 3, 2025
Greta is sailing into Gaza – I hope she lands!
June 4, 2025
In case you missed this snippet: Thunberg tried to land in Gaza repeatedly – then spotted a drone overhead. Then followed an SOS to Greece!
June 10, 2025
It would be like the old times when we jsut sent out one brave soul to fight one from th eother side. Wars would un only for 12 hours after which there would be aceasefire of 24 hours for re-charging batteries back home. Then off they’d toddle to take up the fight ionce more, but only for 12 hours. It would quite convenient. We’d have some units that secialise in night fighting and others designed for daylight, perhaps with solar panels on their backs.
June 4, 2025
shouldn’t have off-shored them in the first place .. but the almighty consumer and the greed for cheap tat rules.
June 3, 2025
@Ian Wraggg – is he and his team out of touch, or was that the plan?
June 10, 2025
How many SSNs are needed to keep one or two protecting the SSBN, one in GRIUK, one in the SW Approaches (UK’s main trade route), one in the North Sea, one on special ops, one in the Indian Ocean, one in the Far East, one in the Med, and one for unforeseen conflict or surge capacity? What proportion would be non- operational (in refit, maintenance period, unplanned maintenance)? What proportion would be on passage to a patrol area?
UK actually has 5 Astute in service + 2 under construction, and one 34 years old Trafalgar class, HMS Triumph. So if not 12 more, how many?
June 3, 2025
I assume the main motivation of the Starmer agenda is to find an excuse for yet another tax raid. The government and Rachael Reeves does not seem to have worked out yet that any tax rate increases from the current hugely over taxes position just kills the tax base further and reduces the tax take in the end! As they are discovering with VAT on private schools, CGT and the war on Non Doms (first started by the dire tax to death and bury the Tories Jeremy Hunt and Sunak). The job killing NI grab will do the same as will the workers rights bill lunacy!
June 3, 2025
@Lifelogic – As we have seen over many years Government and Parliament don’t see tax as removing resources from the economy, but as a demonstration of a Government and Parliament earning!
Surly then that is the plan for the next phase, we cant have elected 650 total numpties
June 3, 2025
Indeed, take the money from people who know how to make and invest it well. Then waste say 50% in collection costs and admin and then give it to government ministers and civil servants to waste on things we do not what like mad new roundabouts, net zero, or blocking roads!
What could possibly go wrong!
June 3, 2025
Why 12 submarines? Why not 10 or 15?
Perhaps they’re planning to station several of them in the channel to protect these islands from the most likely source of invasion: the one currently being demonstrated by the French and thousands of potential terrorists every year?
I am entirely cynical about the current Project Fear the Government and the European Elite are talking-up regarding war with Russia. They want an EU Defence Force and they want the UK in it; funding it and our military under the control of the EU with “our” foreign and defence policy subordinated to that of the EU.
This Defence Review is part of that Project Fear: it is not in our interests to get into a conflict with Russia and it is certainly not in our interests to subordinate our military and defence policy to the EU. We are part of NATO and that is sufficient.
I wonder, have they asked the Chinese if they would mind supplying us with the steel we’ll need for 12 submarines … and promised that they would never be used against Chinese interests …. because thanks to Red Ed and the Net Zero SCAM we won’t be making our own.
June 3, 2025
@Donna – the French Government would have to sanction the UK getting their steel, the only steel the UK now has access to to build our submarines, the UK Parliament banned its production in the UK. Then of course there is the electrotechnics and controls for these boats all under French Government control.
June 3, 2025
+1
June 3, 2025
As SDR’s go, it appears to be a fairly accurate analysis of how weak we have become after decades of cuts to our military capability. It also seems that drone and missile defence of the limited number of military bases that we have left – where we have concentrated our assets – is unaffordable at present.
However, this one appears to be the first since Cameron, Osbourne and Fox’s malign 2010 SDSR – which absolutely eviscerated the Army in particular – to commit to increased spending.
Unfortunately, that malevolent piece of MoD-speak – “up to” – has repeatedly infiltrated the document. It’s “up to” 12 more SSN, it’s “up to” 25 more RN escort ships and it’s “up to” six new Royal Ordnance Factories.
Apparently, we must wait until the autumn to hear what Labour’s SDR means for the military equipment programs. A long battle between the Treasury and the MoD over funding seems certain – or the mooted 3% increase would have become a firm commitment
June 3, 2025
Another MoD favourite is Fitted for but not with. So we end up with ships under armed and quite useless because the weapons are not fitted.
June 3, 2025
Yes the war between the treasury and the MOD is the one they hope to fight. The IMF will probably not prioritise the MOD. Blowing up bridges and dropping them on civilian trains in Russia does not help that outcome.
Perhaps we should keep sending those who want to fight Russia to The Ukraine, so they can get it out of their system. Perhaps Sir Kier would like to lead a group into battle – I know Johnson would love to – he has said so. In The Ukraine they can make you battle ready in 8 days, even if you are disabled.
This man Zelensky is a marvel. He reminds me so much of the little corporal. Willing to sacrifice everyone else’s everything.
June 3, 2025
The authors set out the case for reform and action. The government has failed to say it will fund it. Indeed such is the parlous state of its finances it is unable to do so. The SDR programme is based on the primacy of the need to defend the UK. If that is so and we need to think and act on a war footing then other policies that are incompatible or get in the way should be modified or dumped altogether. Energy policy is an example. Taxes on business and investment are another example. I can think of a number of smaller, AIM listed business which offer critical sovereign capabilities that are hanging on by their finger nails to ensure survival, partly as a consequence of government taxes, policies and regulations that impact them both directly and indirectly. I do not expect joined up thinking from this government. Inevitably hard choices will need to be made between the spending actions called for by the SDR. Let us hope those in charge make more good calls than bad calls.
June 3, 2025
You acknowledge this government can’t think. Why do you assume the authors of the SDR can? Just interested to know. Why would one part of a brainless blob be brilliant?
June 3, 2025
I think Fiona Hill knows what she is talking about, especially concerning Russia.
June 3, 2025
No problem then. We will beat Russia so I don’t know why POTUS and NATO is ‘terrified’ as Fiona Hill puts it.
Why don’t they just openly go into Ukraine and sort it out, push the Russians out of Crimea while they are at it.
What’s your explanation if NATO easily has the upper hand?
June 4, 2025
Possibly .. assuming Russia is the most significant threat for the UK and our interests.
June 4, 2025
Never “assume’ – it makes an ass of u and me.
The war-monger General Kellog is shattered today. He warms of massive escalation because of the Ukraine drone strikes inside Russia. He was not told.
Reality is seeping in.
Fortunately Putin is a cool headed customer, unflappable – like JR.
June 3, 2025
Whilst “It is not in the UK’s interest to get into a war with Russia” this of course is not a new notion but what has been done since the fall of the Soviet Empire to forestall such an occurrence? Too little by our maladroit Foreign Office and nothing at all by Foreign Secretary Johnson who even as late as it was then should have delivered us a now sorely missed non-aggression pact.
June 3, 2025
Lots of talk about AI.
AI in defence? That is just asking for trouble, it can either be hacked or become self aware.
People using computer power please, not computers using computer power.
June 3, 2025
@Narrow Shoulders – all known AI is just a collection data pools to repeat what others have already discovered. It also requires a lot of cost effective electricity something this Government and Parliament denies the UK having
June 3, 2025
If it’s not self-aware, it’s not AI. It’s just a computer.
June 3, 2025
+1
June 3, 2025
Your last sentence re., energy cost is key. I would add to it an achievable policy of economic growth. None of the above being in Starmers DNA. His pronouncements on Defence I see as jam tomorrow window shopping.
Your once colleague Jacob Reese Mogg is correct in that he thinks the whole body politic requires a fundamental reset. He is wishful in thinking it can be done under conservatism as it is in the HoC. His expressed ideas are good and based on recent ministerial experience, but he is on the wrong bus.
If it is to be done, any legislation for a reset, and the needs are comprehensive, must come ready written privately by the next government. The current scribes being too political to be trusted. It must cover the piste and hit the statute book with bang. Call it political penicillin.
June 3, 2025
The rot started with Cameron who tried to reduce defence spending to the then risible level of Germany. Germany approved a doubling by 2030 of its defence budget a couple of years ago in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its budget surpassed UK’s last year. Cuts have a quick and lasting effect and it will take a generation to recover from the savaging by Cameron. Ben Wallace did his best to restore spending to a sensible level but one of the tricks Cameron pulled was to move pensions into the defence budget to get to the NATO target of 2%. That trick is still in place. There was an attempt to shift overseas aid partially or wholly into defence on the ludicrous basis that it reduces the likelihood of war requiring UK’s intervention. I don’t know if any overseas aid is still chalked up to defence.
the currewnt proposal to oincrease production of munitions is not necessarily the right thing to spend money on. The inventory sent to Ukraine must be replaced but the risk that should be obvious is that large stockpiles may well be obsolete in the nest war. The real requirement is an ability to innovate rapidly in response to new threats, weapons and tactics. It is difficult but it is the main lesson to be drawn from every conflict since WWI. Stockpiles constitute a sunk cost in these circumstance and the Treasury – so often the enemy at home – will not write it off and may refuse further expenditure on new weapons until these stocks are used. It happens. Although Blair did provide additional funding for his wars, it was still not enough.
The kind of innovation that is needed requires a thriving industrial base. Innovators can quickly switch from civilian to military production as they have done before. Manufacturing vast quantities of likely obsolete munitions is a waste of money. UK needs to rebuild its industrial base first.
that said there is a strong need to expand the numerical strength, particularly of the Navy as UK is a maritime nation and its strategic interests – even controlling illegal immigration – require a numerically strong Navy at low levels of fighting capability as well as at the top end of highly capable – and highly expensive – ships, aircraft and land vehicles. Full threat spectrum.
The other key point is not about defence per se but British culture. Culture is the essence of the nation state. Starmer’s Gang do not believe in the nation state and its Woke Left and Islamist allies are already demolishing it from entrenched positions in state institutions of UK. This is what will destroy Britain long before any military threat. If this cultural threat fuelled by indiscriminate mass immigration is not dealt with, UK will not be worth defending militarily.
Be in no doubt, Starmer’s Gang viscerally hates the Britain it finds itself governing and wants to raze it to the ground only to replace it with some socialist paradise like Mahagonny (Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht), which will be disastrous. Socialists and communbists, despite a track record of 100% failure still think it worth yet another attempt to do it properly next time.
June 3, 2025
Before we embark on a submarine project, there are a couple of aircraft carriers that need sorting out.
June 3, 2025
@Dave Andrews +1 Built as intended with nuclear power and cats a traps. Then they could be at sea for more than 10days, and home a variety of aircraft needed and necessary to have a proper naval air-wing, that is capable of more than just protecting the ship.
Then again, the MOD wanted to save a few quid to make itself look good and fund more DEI staff
June 3, 2025
I see our aircraft carriers have a pivotal role to play in the defence review.
Aircraft carriers are an essential platform for projecting power globally. The carrier strike group is the best force for fighting WWII in the Pacific. Carriers are also a job creation scheme which aided the Scots and the French; in that role they are excellent. In any case, Mr Putin has very kindly offered to sink them.
I see that the defence revue has decided also that the F35B is not the only attack aircraft we need which is a good idea because they were designed to protect US marines during an opposed assault. In that role their limited range and munitions carrying capabilities are not important.
June 3, 2025
@forthurst +1
June 3, 2025
If the carriers are to remain in active service for many years to come, we need to avoid being stuck for fast jets with warheads approval by USA. Let it be known that UK are keen to meet a requirement from serious bidders other than USA. Perhaps Russia, China, France, Sweden would all be interested. Hinting that our future policy must not rely on grace and favour from US posts a new message worldwide.
June 4, 2025
Please bash the carriers why don’t you? Strange that all other major naval powers have carriers, but somehow we should not.
June 3, 2025
I read the document yesterday. It was good to see that all the preposterous nonsense about “global Britain projecting power into the Indo-Pacific” that we heard from Boris Johnson has been filed in the waste paper bin. We will do what we can there in a crisis, within the constraints of our capabilities, but cannot be expected to change the game. But doubts about the rest of it remain. I really don’t see how the money is to be found to fund two war-capable Army divisions and a deployable headquarters for one of NATO’s ‘strategic reserve corps’. In my view the authors should have bitten the bullet and taken the opportunity to dial down the obligations on the Army.
June 3, 2025
Power in the Pacific went with Deigo Garcia.
Let’s hope Australia, New Zealand and Fiji never need help.
June 3, 2025
There was something yesterday in Keir Starmer’s talk in front of reporters and staff at the BaE shipyard in Govan that just wasn’t credible; he was once again talking the talk but having no facts or detail on how he was going to do what he was promising to do; everyone looked blankly on as if they didn’t believe a word he was talking about, and they would be correct in those thoughts.
Most of what he was promising was going to happen under the next parliament, probably not Labour nor Lib Dem; maybe Reform or Conservative, and we wouldn’t be fully armed up by 2034.
There was no suggestion how the £billions would be funded to carry out this re-armament.
With the passion and single mindedness we have for net zero, will we have the manufacturing capability in the UK to produce rockets and submarines.I doubt it very much.
Can we be certain that the building of ships and submarines will be in the UK, in UK shipyards, by UK workers or will the build contracts be offered around the World and given to the cheapest tenderer.
Has consideration been given to using other countries to build our needs to support our defence agenda so we can bring the timeframe for being ‘ready for war’ forward if needed.
Not very long ago we reduced our army from 120k soldiers down to 70k.The loss of those soldiers was easy and quick to achieve; recruitment and training however takes time and money even if you can identify sufficient numbers of willing men and women to join our armed forces.Maybe we should consider bringing back national service but that would be Politically unpopular so wasn’t mentioned.
This is all too little too late and what the PM spoke about yesterday was a thoroughly Political statement telling everyone what they wanted to hear;
But is it deliverable?Absolutely not!
June 3, 2025
Agree 100% “everyone looked blankly on as if they didn’t believe a word he was talking about”.
There is a pattern of Starmer desperation on public display for national TV where he attempts to show his leadership skills.
However as the cameras own around you see a silent workforce staring at the large LED screen cue board (like a Church hymn sheet) instead of him.
Compare that with Trump saying to US Steel workers “Are you ready for this?” to a cheering crowd .
A by-election in Scotland in a few days up the road but I bet Starmer won’t be on the streets with ordinary working people – only surrounded by Labour supporters.
June 3, 2025
Perhaps Starmer ‘s LED screen forgot to prompt the Audience: Cheer loudly!
June 4, 2025
He has no “presence.” He looks like a frightened rabbit in the headlights.
June 3, 2025
This was the response from a despised white working man:
Who do you think you are kidding Keir* Starmer
If you think we’re all that dumb
We are the voters who will stop your little game
We are the voters who will make you think again
So who do you think you are kidding Keir* Starmer
If you think the Brits are dumb?
* it wasn’t quite that polite 🙂
June 3, 2025
@Donna +99
and it rhymed…..
June 3, 2025
Excellent Donna!
June 3, 2025
@Paul Wooldridge +99
I said something similar below in a more personal style which our host may see as an attack on the PM. Rightly deserved of course, but I admit to it coming close to the Diary’s red line.
June 3, 2025
“The UK does need to strengthen the defence of our home islands”, you say, Sir John. I agree. 150,000 illegals have reportedly invaded the country since 2018. Isn’t that where we need to be strengthening our defences?
June 3, 2025
Again I fail to see the logic of this spend. Britain has been a victim of Russophobia since 1822.
It needs to stop. Reality is as mentioned in this post, Russia does not pose a threat to us. If the US had not commenced this proxy war we would still be trading with Russia and energy costs would be lower.
June 3, 2025
+1 and we should have taken full advantage of having the most pro-European President in the Kremlin we might ever have. We could sign a security Treaty with him. Instead _ we attack him.
Good luck with Medvedev. Maybe Kaja Kallis will be able to confound him – she confounds me. She’s not quite good enough to be a Kindergarten teacher.
June 3, 2025
Last night GBNEWS showed firstly the PM at some factory setting telling us how we would be moving towards a war footing, and some fancy words about more jobs – Ha
Next they showed the Defence secretary in the commons making the same announcement. ASTONSINGLY they both used exactly the same words, as though HMG had run out of speech writers and they’d had to share a script.
More likely that was because they had decided that they had to be careful in what words and phrases they used, making any promises or being too specific!
This is all unbelievable and shocking – Starmer is using his response to Trump’s call for Europe to fund their own defence, to turn us into a war machine. His intent, clearly is to wage war against Russia, using Ukraine as bait.
None of this would have been even 10% necessary if Starmer had not promised to support Ukraine when Trump stopped supplying them with weapons. Starmer is a warmonger and it seems he deliberately wants to challenge Russia. Without Starmer’s intervention Ukraine would have folded, and we’d have had peace, which it seems was totally against what Starmer wanted.
Now look at the reality — With Net0 ruining our country and closing down our industry just how will these fantasist dreams to build a huge defence force be possible, and how will we pay for it?
No doubt he will impoverish more people with an ever growing tax rate, but there is not a chance in hell that we will be able to get the better of Russia. We are being led down a path once more that will only bring on our ruin more quickly.
There should be a way to stop the deluded holding power.
June 3, 2025
Defence reviews are political excuses to do nothing and kick an urgent problem into the long grass. A percentage of GDP is also a political fudge, defence and security is a duty of government, of parliament and cannot simply be measured by a percentage spend. Sure, we have to find the money but most of would ask how much money is squandered on supporting and welcoming the criminal invasion of the UK? How much money is spent on the legal cabal to ensure criminals get to stay? These legal fees should as with UK citizens be paid by their home nations, not local taxpayers. How much UK man-power is consumed in monitoring innocuous social media activity to try to dig up a lot of nothing. There are many more situations of waste of unneeded expenditure that shouldn’t happen before Parliament has done it basic duty for us all.
There is and endless waste, and all the UK can do is put one small band of those willing to serve, as their own professionals have recently admitted, on the front line for about 5 days before resources run out. That is a failure of our MP’s, Parliament, Government they let those that elect them down before they cross the threshold into Parliament.
June 3, 2025
A Defence review helps cover arses in the military community, and assists politicians in avoiding blame for what needs spending.
June 3, 2025
The thing with Starmer is that whenever there is a really problematic thing going on ie the immigrants crossing the Channel, he finds something else he thinks will impress people he is doing something. In this case we have defence which has been ignored for years when you are only as good as how good you protect your country and people. We are at terrible risk and nothing is being achieved to stop this issue. As you say, no evidence has been given as to how all this defence in the skies is going to be paid for. We know it will be us the tax payer who will fund it if it ever gets off the ground which I doubt on present evidence. All pie in the sky talk to hide other more immediate problems.
June 3, 2025
“It is not in the UK’s interest to get into a war with Russia. “
But it might be in Starmer’s interest. What better way to cancel elections, stay in power and stop Reform winning the next election?
“No sensible UK government”
Let’s be honest. We haven’t got a sensible government, have we!
June 3, 2025
Spot on Christine.
June 3, 2025
Can we trust this defence review to be correct? Just over three years ago, drones were not part of warfare. That’s how fast things change in today’s world.
Rebuilding our armed forces will take a completely different mindset from our current obsession with Net Zero. On the one hand, the Net Zero fanatics are pushing the price of energy up and preventing the use of our own fossil fuel reserves; on the other, the government says it is going to build submarines, ammunition factories and data centres, which all consume massive amounts of energy.
Nor does the government have a clue where the money is coming from. The only sure thing is that it will hurt the pocket of every taxpayer, with taxes rising to pay for our essential defence!
June 3, 2025
Like most things from this Government this review was long on wishful thinking and low on reality, and most importantly, even if everything suggested was done, could it possibly defend us from serious attack? If the Defence Secretary had any courage or character he would resign, rather than continue to be accountable for a policy he has almost admitted to knowing is rubbish.
June 3, 2025
Why do you keep ignoring the electronics, software and allied industries.
There is no point in manufacturing ordinance, tanks, subs, or aircraft unless you can detect targets, track them and target them effectively.
Politicians seem to believe steel is the be all and end all of economy and warfare despite Ukraine clearly demonstrating that it is intelligence and technology that is needed.
Is it that politicians cannot understand anything beyond heating stuff up and banging it with a hammer?
Reply I agree!
June 3, 2025
It seems we are woefully lacking in the importance F1 shows in having strategists that number crunch possible events to predict best response for optimum outcome.
Perhaps if the need is that real for 12 subs, we need to get at least half available in 5 or so years?
Predictions of need so far out are futile.
June 3, 2025
Common sense logic.
Even rarer from UniLab than it was from UniCon
June 3, 2025
Defence Spending as a percentage of GDP
Out today -“, BoE staff said in their latest report that underlying GDP growth was actually zero in the first quarter of the year.”
So what is 3% of nothing or even 2% of nothing?
June 3, 2025
The OECD has downgraded its forecasts for UK growth in its latest outlook report today. It now predicts 1.3% this year and 1% in 2026…
So 2/3/3.5% of nothing is still nothing when managing ‘all’ expenditure is ‘all’ that is needed, more taxes is not managing it is removing the seed corn of growth. More taxes to fund a NetZero dream that no one of any consequence in the World is even thinking about
June 3, 2025
Then there is more…
https://order-order.com/2025/06/03/nato-summit-to-force-uk-defence-spending-hike-to-3-5-by-2035/
A commitment to grow defence spending is not now after 2TK is voted in in 2029, but the time after that if gets in for a third term in 2034. Then the contradictions roll in
… Two briefings from the department have landed concurrently in The Times and Sky News which spell out that the UK will be forced to commit to spend a larger 3.5% on defence at the NATO summit later this month. 24 to 25 June…
“Senior figures in the Ministry of Defence have been left baffled by Sir Keir Starmer’s position on spending — namely to avoid committing to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence in the next parliament. A senior defence source said Britain would “without a doubt” have to sign up to a much higher target in three weeks’ time at the Nato summit in the Hague.”
June 3, 2025
Starmer is practising a deceit on the British people. Firstly there is no threat from Russia, it was about Ukraine joining NATO and secondly increasing military expenditure is unaffordable undermining essential funding of infrastructure and vital services. He’s playing exactly the same game as most of his EU counterparts. War with Russia would be catastrophic. Why doesn’t Starmer engage in diplomacy to stop military conflict and concentrate on the needs of the British people? Starmer wants to strut around the world stage pretending to be important. He is not and neither is the UK in the grand scheme of things!
June 3, 2025
Increasing defence spending from the current pledge of 2.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent would cost around £30 billion
Hansard – Home Office figures cited in August last year that the annual asylum cost reached £3.96 billion in the year up to 2023
House of Commons library – projected NetZero costs to increase from 1.1% of GDP at present to 3.3% of GDP that equates to £89 billion a year
.. 1% of GDP today equals £27 billion
Pouring money down the drain for no return easy. Valuing those creating wealth and paying taxes to sustain Government and Parliament. For NetZero read Zero return. How can a Government increase the tax-take when it has a policy of blocking growth?
June 3, 2025
“This requires an urgent change of energy policy.”
Yes, a complete reversal of the Net Zero policy. Not only to have sufficient, reliable and affordable energy available but because there is absolutely no energy security from low energy density wind turbines spread out over the North Sea all of which, plus their cabling, is vulnerable to drone attack. Our unprotected solar “farms” could be smashed overnght by gangs of strangers. This policy change will have no affect on climate as CO2 is not a pollutant isn’t the cause of our current warming of 0.14 degrees C per decade.
June 3, 2025
“The government thinks it would be a good idea to have 12 more submarines and 6 new UK factories to make ammunition and explosives.”
There is no more chance of this happening than when PM Johnson announced the DESNZ plan for 8 new nuclear reactors by 2050 at the rate of one per year back in May 2022. This announcement is just the MOD instructing a PM to make a promise to keep the plebs happy safe in the knowledege that it will never be implemented and will soon be forgotten.
To understand what the MOD have planned it is necessary to read the Guardian where are found articles expounding that instead of submarines and factories “spending should be focused on the immediate threats we face: underfunded public services and an escalating climate crisis”.
June 3, 2025
This is bizarre. It ignores the Fifth Column within, arriving on a daily basis by small boats, housed in 5-star hotels and provided with an income and other benefits far in excess of many pensioners, paid for by the British taxpayer. When will the PM take his head out of the sand.
June 4, 2025
out of the …’sand’ will have to suffice. I very much doubt Sir John would allow what I was thinking to substitute.
June 3, 2025
“They think the UK does have to take the Russian threat more seriously and commit to European defence.”
All smoke and mirrors. The bigest threat to our country has not even been mentioned let alone opposed. It is the invasion of the strangers.
June 4, 2025
We don’t have a sensible UK government.