Scared of what labour will do

2016 BBC

Mr Corbyn, a longstanding campaigner for nuclear disarmament, is at odds with many of his MPs over the future of the weapons system.

However, supporters of Mr Corbyn want to change it at the party conference later this year, arguing the weapons will never be used and its multi-billion pound cost cannot be justified.

Sounds great. Not.

Its like Narnia on here sometimes.... but Corbyn...Apart from in 2017, when he was leader, he said this, repeated again in 2019... JC was a back bencher in 2015.....

Speaking during a campaign visit to Birmingham, Jeremy Corbyn said: “The manifesto makes it very clear that the Labour party has come to a decision and is committed to Trident
“We’re also going to look at the real security needs of this country on other areas such as cyber-security, which I think the attack on our NHS last week proved there needs to be some serious re-examination of our defences against those kinds of attacks"
A party spokesperson said: “Trident will be renewed come what may, the continuous at-sea deterrent"

Pity May Johnson & Sunak didn't improve our cyber security.

Economist on R4 today saying the UK, unlike Europe will struggle to borrow more for defence as our gilt yields are so high, sole reason - TRUSS....

For those unhappy we didn't vote Labour in some of the earlier rounds a poster reminded on Corbyn wanting to decommission Trident

We'd dodged a massively weakening move. Only France and UK have it in Europe

Yes, you make a fair point. And I do strongly believe in services and benefits being available to all those who need them. Not necessarily on the basis of having paid in all ones life, because whether we are able to do this or not and to what extent, is not typically a matter of choice, but of circumstances and privilege. But on the basis of need. It's very difficult to argue that wealthy people need state benefits (by which I mean income, not health services) and the only way to stop adding to already healthy incomes from an almost empty public purse is means testing. Yes its expensive, so a cost/benefits analysis would need to be done before introducing it. Presumably its thought to be cost effective for benefits that are already MT.

Yes thats yet another disaster the Tories gave the UK... but far more important to focus on a CV....

I'm from a navy tradition gong back to the 1800s... the running down of Devonport is criminal... it must be half the size it was back in the 80s... the UK has less frigates and destroyers than Japan, a similar island nation, we have just 14... 23 in 2010...

I don't know if the 'yard holds back the local economy, i'd have thought transport links do that, the A38 seems to be considered a country lane by many people from outside of the area.

I see Covid now being dragged up as an excuse the Tories didn't spend on defence... that really is weak considering how much was borrowed and utterly wasted on business support loans in particular.

I think the annexing of Crimea in 2014 was a reason & a warning to at least plan for additional spend, instead we went down the Brexit rabbit hole, that has cost 40 billion plus...

£45bn rax revenue per year now, and counting. Compounding annually.

Equivlent to almost the entire defence budget.

Or double the tax rises that Reeves imposed in autumn.

Nearly half of the education budget.

Imagine what could have been done with the nearly £500bn in tax revenues it has cost the UK so far. And the £800bn of so it has cost the rest of the economy (businesses, employees). And it'll continue year after year after year until we get a sane government.

But people said they wanted to be poorer, so 🤷🏻‍♀️ I guess they got their wish.

Means-testing is notorious for costing more than it saves in most cases and then lowering tax revenues as well by creating new cliff-edges. It is almost always a terrible idea economically.

It is also exactly what you'd do if you wanted to abolish a service entirely: first you means-test it. Then the people paying to it (usually several times over, for everyone else) can't access it. So instead of being a universal public service of which those who earn more pay the majority it instead becomes simple redistribution and nothing else because those funding it cannot even access it when they need it. Public support for whatever it is evaporates and then you can cut the threshold or just let its value inflate away over time until it doesn't exist/ may as well not exist any more.

Be careful what you wish for.

Alexandra2001
I think the annexing of Crimea in 2014 was a reason & a warning to at least plan for additional spend

'Real-terms spending has increased each year since 2016/17 ...'

Alexandra and I live in the same area, near Plymouth, so the Navy specifically is a very significant factor in the local economy. There is no escaping it. It both underpins the local economy and holds it back simultaneously. Your thoughts @Alexandra2001 ?

I think I probably would. One of the bases we lived on when I was a child is still empty. For me, the shrinking of the military was coinciding with troops being brought back from Germany after reunification. Where we live, over the last 25 years, the military bases all have houses on them, I guess it crept up so slowly that you don't pay much attention.

I was surprised when they made the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth as it's so big it would be a high value target in a war. It seemed more of a vanity project than a defence project, suitable for an era of no war. We need to change our mindset, low cost, high quantity arms that do the job.

I remember talking about security mattering and getting the usual on here a few years ago

The electorate were not there.

Now they might be given the threat

Then the small issue of a pandemic

I think the annexing of Crimea in 2014 was a reason & a warning to at least plan for additional spend, instead we went down the Brexit rabbit hole, that has cost 40 billion plus...

But the Tories did nothing after 2021, even after running down stocks to give to Ukraine.

@Llttledrummergirl If you'd seen the running down of Devonport, since at least 2008, when i first started going there, you'd be concerned.

Up until recent events, defence hasn't had to be particularly high on the agenda. If the tories had raised spending I might have wondered why.
It's not really been high on my things to worry about over the last few years compared to more concerning and pressing issues. I've probably been as guilty as everyone else with complacency and certainties we've come to rely on Now is time to be uniting and putting petty point scoring to one side.

Tories did not raise defense spending because there was no reason to do so. Not until Putin invaded Ukraine. And now, it's a pickle.

Llttledrummergirl
Bloody hell Clav, wit [sic] the best willbin [sic] the world, give it a rest

You don't have to read my posts, it's not compulsory - plenty of other threads to read.

But you were fine with the 'divisive' post I was replying to??????

'Still no answers on why the Tories didn't increase defence spend when they were IN power...'

DH is a supplier to the defense industry so our fortunes ebb and flow with it, but increasingly our work comes from bio-generated power. It won't be many years before we tilt harder towards that, because as a business you follow the work. We shall still for a while be competent to do defense work too, but I know that if there isn't enough of it to train our novice people, then the finesse will be lost.

Bloody hell Clav, wit the best willbin the world, give it a rest.

Trump is fucking nuts and has turned the world on its head. Is now really a time to keep banging the drum for division? You seem nearly as behind current affairs as Braverman and she's still in 20fucking23.

Defence spending was increasing again ('the UK currently spends 2.3% of its GDP on defence'.)

December 2024

Real-terms defence spending fell by 22% between 2009/10 and 2016/17 (from £57.1 billion to £44.6 billion in 2023/24 prices), before starting to increase again to nearer its 2010 levels.

Real-terms spending has increased each year since 2016/17, with the exception of 2023/24, and is expected to continue to do so. However, the fall in expenditure in the most recent year is likely to be an artefact of technical adjustments to the 2022/23 budget to finance the implementation of the new accounting standard, IFRS 16, rather than a decrease in available resource.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8175/

It's not as if the last Labour government were going to maintain defence spending after the financial crash (see also Labour leaders Miliband and Corbyn up thread);

March 2010

Alistair Darling admitted tonight that Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances.

^The Institute for Fiscal Studies said hefty tax rises and Whitehall spending cuts ... were in prospect during the six-year squeeze lasting until 2017 ...

departments not protected ... such as transport, defence and the Home Office [could] face budget reductions of 25%.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher

I note that in 2010 Labour pledged to raise overseas aid to 0.7% of national output.

Still no answers on why the Tories didn't increase defence spend when they were IN power...

Its a fair question surely?

Same reason as those who detest the government assume everyone who doesn’t constantly slate them voted for them, I guess. 🤷‍♀️

@5128gap exactly so. I don’t think the removal of the WFA is seen as a biggie here, because the majority of posters are not pensioners. There appears to be a view that we’re either on benefits or we have huge houses, gold plated pensions and are off on cruises several times a year!

Talking of dereliction of duty, it's just as well JC didn't win the election in 2019. Or is that irrelevant because it didn't happen? What if it had though?

Fair question. I don't recall a big campaign on military spending

How is it ‘usually pretty obvious’?

The only people who will be 'massively' impacted by means testing are people with means. In a situation where there isn't enough money for benefits it makes sense to stop paying them to those who don't need the money. The reason the WFA cut landed so badly was because no means test was done. Its a cliff edge that has left some low income people much worse off. Had it been means tested and tapered it would have been fine. I'm not saying current means tests work well. There are flaws and inconsistencies and they are not imo sufficiently generous, but in principle I think they are fair and necessary.