UK must halt defence cuts and lead the way for Europe in NATO, says Labour’s shadow defence secretary

22 comments
  1. I agree. The UK should look to be spending 4% of GDP on defence, not the bare minimum of 2%.

    A big chunk of that extra spending should be on more pay and better conditions for service members, as all the services have a shortage of manpower right now.

  2. Logical. The military should never have had cuts in the first place. The Tories literally had the audacity to call themselves patriotic all the while cutting the defence budget. Muppets.

  3. Britain is not at war. Our spending on the military is stupidly high for peacetime.
    Schools are failing, the NHS is failing, taxes are high. Any one of those is a higher priority.

  4. Britain can’t even lead itself, the fuck makes you think it can lead Europe in NATO. UK can be told to fuck off it they’re gonna tell the EU to fuck off through Brexit.

  5. I’d agree with that, but only if that means we’re also guaranteeing social spending won’t fall.

    The last place I want to be is in a space where the military is sacred and can never be reduced but asking for more money to make our society better is unaffordable. You know, the terrible place the US is.

  6. This is good.

    Labour taking the lead on national defence and highlighting the devastating consequences of the last 13 years of Tory spending priorities on defence is an excellent point on which to draw a significant distinction between the parties.

    With broad appeal across the electorate, especially while the Russian invasion of Ukraine is going on, returning to our roots as the party that led the charge on founding and expanding NATO will be a welcome turn after the aberrant period of party history between 2015-2020 and after the stoked culture wars since brexit.

    Plus on pure merit and pragmatism alone, our military desperately needs investment and expansion from its dire status quo, and doing so could be a genuine route through which to help navigate the looming Tory recession.

  7. Man whats been coming out of the labour party for the last couple of months has been so depressing. Won’t end the privatisation of the NHS, or commit to renationalising our services like he pledged, but he will increase our military budget? Are we the 51st state of America yet?

  8. If we are going to hike the GDP defence percentage then raise the corporation tax back to 28 percent to what it was before the Tories took power. They gradually reduced it to a low of 19 percent and they had plans to reduce it lower to 17 percent. ( Billions have been lost to the public purse)

    They really had no choice to raise it up to 25 percent in April 2023 or an army might have been marching on Westminster.

  9. Fucking everyone should be putting more money into NATO rn.

    Straining procurement chains just by supporting one country doesn’t really bode well for the future this war has set up.

    As with Russia, the more conventional options one retains, it at least means one has options besides using the unconventional options.

  10. Acquiring more ships for the Royal Navy and replacing outdated ones should be first up on the agenda island nations should always have a strong navy

  11. You can have a shiny world-leading army or a publicly ran healthcare service. Both are blackholes that will swallow any funding thrown at them.

  12. Fuck of labour, your just as useless as conservatives. Seems the curent style of politics just doesn’t work well in this modern age.

  13. Pretty sure there’s procedures in NATO how’s what and for what who is responsible. Dunno about leading and if that even is a thing. To me, personally, in retrospect of how many there were anti EU feelings, I wouldn’t want them to lead NATO. I do realize it’s not the same, but NATO is mostly European thing with majority of countries in EU(correct me if I’m wrong). I do want UK in, but not as a main figure. If anyone, it should be US. Due to the fact they they are huge factor in NATO and I even believe they already have a strong effect and say on what’s what anyway.

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