Why did the government watch 200 shadow tankers sail by, then take one over?
Is it going to take the oil cargo and sell it? Or will it let the ship go after a period of detention? Will it prosecute the owners, or take their vessel, or decide they have done nothing wrong after all?
Why does the government insist on peace negotiations everywhere but not Ukraine?
Why does it help Ukraine stay in the fight but not with allies do enough to help it win?
Why doesn’t the government see the need to create an iron dome defence against missiles and drones to protect our islands?
Why has it decommissioned six naval ships and kept so many at home and in maintenance?
What defences does it have against possible hostile Russian action against our pipes, cables, offshore windfarms?
Why does it have money for more bike lanes, steel and rail subsidies, more sicknotes for life for young people, for more joblessness as its crazy net zero and anti work taxes bite, but not more money to defend our islands?
June 16, 2026
You know the answers to these questions. We have a Marxist government led by a man who despises this country which is evident from his days as a prosecuter.
They are rightly known as the welfare party and see £4.5 billion on useless cycle lanes more important than defence. This is in preparation for taxing private transport off he road.
Agenda 30 is in full swing.
June 16, 2026
Admittedly a lot of cycle lanes outside the centre of London is not heavily used. Inside, and I can testify to this as I use them, they very much are.
June 16, 2026
The bike lanes in London usually rather empty too as are the bus lanes. So 90% of the traffics cars and vans gets to use say 20% of the road space. Unless these cars a black cabs that is and they are far less efficient than cars as they are often empty other than the driver for about half the time. Plus they need professional drivers unlike private cars.
June 16, 2026
Paul Hennessy ‘Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’ outlines how imperial overreach spelt the end for many countries. Cost of the military is too much for domestic wealth plus overseas income to support.
A doom loop in the words of a prolific poster on here.
I don’t think this government considers whether it has the income to fund any of its big spending commitments.
The United States is probably heading in the same direction.
June 16, 2026
IT would appear no more money for defence either, how are we supposed to help de-mine the Strait of Hormuz without any boats?
Speaking of wasting money, the Korean Times is reporting their steel manufacturing company SeAH is looking forward to suppling mad Milibrain’s carbon capture fantasy with 1,750 metric tonnes of stainless steel pipe. So, no UK capacity? Why can’t Starmer understand national priorities?
June 16, 2026
Are all our navy is being converted to battery or perhaps steam ships powered by imported wood (bio or young coal) like Drax. Or rowing boats? On orders from the CCC and Milibrain. Perhaps this is the reason they have so few functioning ships.
June 16, 2026
It seems so.
Cannot GBNews find a rather brighter lefty than the Scarlett Maguire woman they had to put the other side of the argument. Not that finding any rational arguments against JR’s obvious and sensible points is that easy.
June 16, 2026
Or at least a more interesting one.
So Starmer is full of praise for Trump’s Iran deal. Was it not Starmer on much of the Labour Party who initially refused him the use of UK and Chagos bases and tried to worse than give away Chagos. Plus liked to make any such deal less likely when ever they could?
Starmer should also listen to Trump on drill baby drill and frack, control immigration and ditch the Net Zero Climate Alarmist vastly exaggerated hoax.
June 16, 2026
“Even the SOVIETS didn’t hate their people like the British government” | David Starkey’s rant on YouTube seems about right.
June 16, 2026
@Ian Wragg +1, I have never know a UK leader and parliament demonstrate such ‘hate’ for the nation and its people.
June 16, 2026
Why doesn’t the government see the need to create an iron dome defence against missiles and drones to protect our islands?
Because Starmer and his merry Mens are hoping to crawl back into the dreaded EU by the back door on there slimy under bellies like slugs and let them make the important decisions, like should I have coffee or tea because they are the most hated political party in existence who I wouldn’t trust to run a bath
June 16, 2026
@Mick +1
June 16, 2026
One thing is absolutely clear about Trump’s “peace deal” with the IRGC. If it confirmed that his war objectives had been met, he would be boasting about it. And he isn’t.
Trump has said no less than 37 times in the past three weeks that “a deal” is very close. We can draw our own conclusions.
June 16, 2026
Trump was reported to have bragged about his peace deal on late Night with Seth Meyers, 94000 views 4 hours ago. Trump also boasted about his Iran peace deal at the G7 summit in France.
Boasting is one of his favourite things to do.
June 16, 2026
Good morning.
First off, why do we need one. Secondly. How much is this going to cost ? Thirdly. For a missile defence system (Anti-Ballistic Missile) ABM to be worth it, it needs to be 100% effective. To date no ABM is, not even the Russians and that is considered to be the best.
When I first started cycling to and from work into London (nearly 30 years ago) I was pretty much the only person. Now, with ‘Boris’ Bikes, Rickshaws and other cyclists there is clearly high demand. Question is: Why take so much money from motorists and still provide poor road marking and roads “
June 16, 2026
And you have survived, hopefully un-injured well done! When I was driving in London I had three crashes over 20 years, non my fault, two smashed into the back of my car (one was on the phone I think) and one into the side from a minor side road. I was in a car so we were all fine but on a bike all three could v. easily have killed or very bad injured a cyclist.
June 16, 2026
Many of Labour’s actions are anti-British.
June 16, 2026
Especially white British borne males it seems.
“Even the SOVIETS didn’t hate their people like the British government” | David Starkey’s rant
June 16, 2026
Missiles and drones are only a hypothetical threat. Meanwhile we have an actual invasion on the south coast where nothing is done to defend the islands.
You may as well give sicknotes for young people, as jobs for them are being priced out of the market.
June 16, 2026
Our current PM is in a pure dichotomy.
On one hand he wants a greatly enlarged armed forces yesterday so that he can bring the fight to Russia – on the other he is too weak to demand of his cabinet that they provide the money to do so, from their budgets.
To understand all of this better it would be necessary to ask why Starmer hates Russia so much?
There has been so much hype and misinformation from HMG about Russian intent, it’s unfortunate that anyone believes it, and yet the government sees it in print and that reinforces their own mistaken concepts.
If Russia had any intention to take the war to the UK or EU, or indeed attempt to punish us for our interference in the war, it would have done so by now.
My belief is that the PM wants to get involved in the war to satisfy his own personal ambitions. A simple extrapolation of the UK and EU with a more substantial army could see us involved directly in the Ukraine war which would become a war on Russia. After that it would be logical to create a government of national unity – other war leaders have done it.
That would be one way to prevent REFORM from getting into government and would mean Starmer remains as PM for as long as he wants!
June 16, 2026
Starmer has very poor judgment, a highly inflated idea of his capabilities and a thirst for power and this makes him very dangerous – to UK – in this situation. He and his gang of assorted communists (the reason they all hate Putin who is anything but) should be removed asap. unfrtunately, they will devise all manner of excuses to delay the next general election as along as possible. The prospect of remaining in government after the automatic dissolution of parliament in 2029 is a very great temptation.
June 16, 2026
“government watch 200 shadow tankers sail by” an election and in fear of ones job!
Need to be seen doing things, any thing, to keep the ‘Plan’ of destruction for the UK and its People on track. If anyone thought there was a different motive they are deluding themselves.
Reflect, the UK Government with approval of the UK Parliament is still buying in vast amounts of Russian oil. The UK Parliament has said it will phase out the license for importing diesel and jet fuel derived from Russian crude from third countries by January 1, 2027. So what is one tanker? Against the millions the UK is sending to Russia. The UK Parliament is still financing Putin’s War in the Ukraine.
Just a headline to make people think there is some defence capability left in the UK, not for long as there is still no money it is spent keeping Socialism alive.
June 16, 2026
A letter yesterday tells me my interest only Mortgage is to go up by a factor of nearly 5 times. From my 1,2% 10 year fix to 5.4%. Thanks to gross incompetence by Cameron through to Sunak and now Reeves & Starmer and the dire BoE with their appalling Carney and Bailey and their serial currency debasing and waste. Plus 8 weeks “working” overseas for all their staff.
June 16, 2026
The answer to everything stated is in the demonstration of the ‘Plan’ the destruction of the UK and its people by any means. 2TK and his Cohorts no longer hide and deflect from their ‘hate’ they have against the nation, they have the UK Parliament behind them and have another 3 years to complete the job.
June 16, 2026
The family of an NHS pharmacist who took his own life after suffering paralysing complications from a COVID jab are calling for urgent reform of the government’s compensation scheme for vaccine damage.
John Cross was told by the official medical assessor for the scheme that the jab had caused his rare neurological effects, but that he wasn’t disabled enough for a payment.
Not that £120k does much to compensate!
The numbers injured in various ways by the “vaccines” is huge they can now show which heart defects were caused by these vaccines but they are still resisting releasing health statistics by vaccine status.
Why on earth they were they ever pushing these dangerous jabs to people who had had Covid already and young people who were never at risk? Also the government were trying to silence the sensible experts who were pointing this out from twitter etc.
June 16, 2026
“Why does it have money for more bike lanes, steel and rail subsidies, more sicknotes for life for young people, for more joblessness as its crazy net zero and anti work taxes bite, but not more money to defend our islands?”
The Government, Parliament, the Civil Service and the judiciary are populated by international Marxist Fabian socialists, such as our current PM and Chancellor, who do not believe in the continued existence of independent and democratic nation states. Hence they see no point in defending our islands and are in favour of mass immigration. As Lord Gus O’Donnell who, when Cabinet Secretary, said in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration….. I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national.” It was PM May who put the “crazy net zero” into law without a proper debate, without a vote and without a costing and also signed the UK up to the UN Migration Pact. She still represents the Conservative Party in the HoL.
June 16, 2026
Good questions. Of course you won’t get any sensible answers from the government.
1) the reason for boarding one tanker only is probably to do with the internal threats to Starmer from his colleagues.
2) I doubt the government has the slightest idea what to do with either the tanker or its cargo. What powers does UK have to seize either from Russia as supplier or from the customer, with neither of whom is Britain at war. Britain like all other coiuntries, has powers to stop and search but that is about all. What evidence did UK have that it had a reason to stop and search? What law was suspected of being broken?
Since UK is not a belligerent in the Ukraine war it has very little power to stop and search, let alone to seize, a merchant ship and its cargo. the ship was not suspected of any breach of UK law in Britain’s territorial waters. Russia’s accusation of piracy has some force in law – not that Russia would bother to pursue it in an international court.
That the Russian warship in the vicinity did nothing is interesting. Presumably it did not want to escalate. As I have said many times in various fora, Russia is not a serious military threat to UK in terms of intention, although it has the capability to be a serious threat should it choose to be one. It has no need need to risk Russian lives while the main threat to UK, the unholy alliance of the Woke Left and Starmer’s Gang with Islamism, is already well established inside the gates and advancing its cultural and economic destruction of UK.
My conclusion is that this incident was purely performative to help save Starmer’s skin and the question of what to do next can be kicked down the road, at least for a time. It would be typical of him. But things could get very iunteresting if Britain does it again. Next time Russia might respond with force as it would be legally entitled to do even if unwise.
June 16, 2026
200 shadow tankers did not sail past – they are positioned and moving all over the world and it is arguable whether we can legally detain any of these vessels except maybe the ones passing through our own territorial waters and even then we should have good reason – to do so at the behest of the Americans is not good reason – certainly what the US is at in the Caribbean, the Arabian Sea and worldwide in this regard is illegal and may come back to haunt.
June 16, 2026
Had you asked the PM these very valid questions during the period, laughing called “PM Questions”, you would have heard the standard reply of ” After 14 years of Tory rule, bla bla bla” but never the answers required.
We have to face it, our PM doesn’t “do” politics. He merely hides behind his credentials as an HR Barrister and always refers to others, including the International Court of Justice, rather than making his own decisions. POTUS Trump highlighted the lack of true leadership when he told Starmer that, as PM, he was in charge.
‘Never here, two-tier’ Starmer is unfit to be our Prime Minister. In fact, none of the Labour leadership front-runners is able to take over. So let’s have a GE and allow the electorate to decide who’s best to lead, to answer these and other “awkward” questions and explain their actions.
June 16, 2026
So we arrest a large tanker and now what? The expense and worry of minding it now rests on the governnrnt agencies concerned – certainly the ships master cannot be held to account if anything untoward happens his power has been taken away.. then the cost alone of minding such a large vessel should be ringing alarm bells
June 16, 2026
20th May. Starmer relaxes sanctions on fuel made from Russian crude in India.
15th June. Starmer seizes, using marines, a Russian owned tanker carrying crude to India and crewed by an Indian captain and foreign sailors. The captain is being prosecuted.
June 16, 2026
Defence, who mentioned defence – how dare you!
From media reports it would appear there is an election for a new Prime Minister, someone that will arrive with a new agenda. a new mandate, a new manifesto, without having a General Election. Around 76,000 people have been chosen to vote on what is best for the UK, the UK’s new direction. The 48,000,000 that will be affected and will be paying the bills will just have to ‘suck it up’ the UK is now a Socialist Dictatorship.
This is the new version of democracy forced on a population by a corrupt Parliament.
June 16, 2026
Sounds like the Labour government were hoping to confuse potential enemies but ended up confusing themselves instead and are unable to step up and make hard sensible decisions on anything they are supposed to be responsible for.
By default its don’t blame us gov!
As for the token shadow Russia tanker it’s like doing something so they can’t be blamed for doing nothing. Pathetic sadly.
June 16, 2026
710 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 15th June 2026 …..threat unknown, criminal intent unknown, military association unknown, loyalty unknown
June 16, 2026
The BBC was asking, ‘Why does the US economy keep defying the odds? I read that its worst-performing state, Mississippi, is doing better than the UK on metrics like median household income, real GDP per capita.
June 16, 2026
were cycle lanes in the manifesto? I doubt it. in one north east city I know they have installed miles and miles of cycle lane, and you would be lucky to see one cycle use them per day. lots more of the cyclists prefer to stay on the road. and of course the significantly thinned down roads make it very difficult for ambulances and fire engines to get through the traffic now, emergency runs now take far longer. this is not a sensible spend for the country, even if we were the richest country in the world.
wont be able to say this soon as the state will be monitoring what we all say, and anything contrary to the public narrative will put us in the gulag.
June 16, 2026
Odd that Starmer should arrange as a PR exercise and boast about stopping a shadow tanker in the Channel given the obvious follow-up observation that he is unable and unwilling to stop a few rubber boats similarly. I see the Russians have fired a warning shot as a result – let’s see what he does about that, I assume nothing.
June 16, 2026
massive mistake for the Conservative front bench to come out in support of the governments crack pot ideas on restricting free speech on the internet.
almost as if they want nobody to vote for them.
they don’t even have to do any work figuring out what “good” would look like, they just need to follow Elon on twitter
June 16, 2026
Elon is apparently making 121 billion per day, and he still finds time to be the main opposition to the UK Labour government. So funny.
June 17, 2026
Well he is rather good at flogging his shares on vast PE multiples but when might the music stop?