To be alarmed at Starmers plans

[Rubytuesday77]

Anybody else worried about his ongoing plans for deeper involvement in Ukraine. In an interview yesterday he said he intends to send our troops out there. Surely this would mean we’d be at war with Russia! Anyone else very concerned.

Russia invaded another country. The blame lies entirely with them.

This 100%!

We should have done alot more to help Ukraine back in 2022 - if we’re in a more difficult situation now it’s because of our inaction.

We can only remedy this by stepping up, not stepping back. Russia is well known to back down when faced with strength but escalate when faced with weakness - as we’ve seen throughout this terrible war!

So presumably when the Conservatives won 36% of vote share in 2010 that government wasn't democratically elected.

My mistake, the Conservatives didn't reach a majority. They needed the Lib Dems.

What do you think can be achieved by stepping up?

What are you asking to happen?

Preventing russia from annihilating Ukraine and advancing forwards into the rest of Europe.

Which they have repeatedly said they want to do.

The only way of preventing this is to stop them in their tracks now.

Appeasement, or leaving Ukraine to fight until they can’t go on any longer, will only lead to a much bigger war and more loss of life/ liberty.

I knew you’d come back with this. We do have a government the majority of UK disapproves.

That’s not the point. Our model of government is representative and has been for hundreds of years. It’s not about the specific government at the time.

Fascinating to watch those that welcomed Boris Johnson's support for Ukraine suddenly become more ambivalent about the value of supporting Ukraine when it's Starmer doing it.

Johnson's pledge of support to them was one of the few things I thought he got entirely right. And I assume that Ben Wallace felt similarly as he wasnt shy at coming forward.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-ukraine-zelenskyy-johnson-putin-b2655825.html

It's amazing how thirtysomething percent of the vote is fiiiiiine if it elects the party you like but suddenly not legitimate if it doesn't. Some people don't seem to understand or even want democracy.

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing at the start I felt strongly too but over time and listening to military insight I feel a bit differently.

I'm not sure it's a winnable war and the sheer number of young men dying daily feels more and more onerous.

Thousands, they are people's sons. I struggle with those numbers

Also Labour are still ahead in most opinion polls - and are helped also by the left generally being more willing to vote tactically.

They might have a smaller majority if there was an election tomorrow but that or a Lab/Libdem coalition is the most likely scenario according to the polls.

I know they are people’s sons - I know one of those people whose son it is!

It is also people’s family members - real people themselves - who have to live under the russian regime wherever it takes hold.

And more selfishly, it is the rest of Europe that will still have to fight this war, but further west, and with Ukraine subsumed into Russia’s war capabilities, if we don’t stop them at Ukraine.

We’ll see what happens. A large part comes down to the US who have been funding high amounts. Starmer can’t make many claims if the US makes their own moves.

US have been sending a tiny fraction of weapons they no longer need, boosting their own economy.

It’s shameful how little the west as a whole has provided even in terms of defence weapons such as air defence. When we have many times enough to allow Ukraine to defend all of their cities successfully just sitting in warehouses.

We have horribly failed a country whose
security we promised to guarantee- our promises have been shown to be worthless unfortunately. No country will ever voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons again and that’s on us (the war as a whole is on russia obviously).

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing

It’s shameful how little the west as a whole has provided even in terms of defence weapons such as air defence. When we have many times enough to allow Ukraine to defend all of their cities successfully just sitting in warehouses

I’m not at all convinced we do TBH.

There isn’t much modern coming off the production line that can be deployed in numbers (the German Iris-T donations were an outlier, welcome and notable), other than that pretty much all of the advanced current systems (e.g Patriot) are pretty much spoken for and/deployed/only exist in small numbers, and a lot of what has been donated (e.g, various Sparrow variants) are elderly and close to the end of shelf life….

@GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing I was thinking more of the billions in funding that get passed by congress. If the US makes different decisions Starmer won't have much to go with

Even the EU would struggle without the US funding

Ah, another massive waste of taxpayer money. No thank you. I’d rather we do what we can to support Ukraine and keep Russia from advancing through the rest of Europe.

If money is all we are caring about it’s cheaper to support Ukraine than it would be if Poland got attacked. We’d be in hook line and sinker then because of NATO commitments.

And how's our political ways working out for us?not that grand by the look of it you must admit

Preventing russia from annihilating Ukraine and advancing forwards into the rest of Europe.

Why do you think this would happen? Which parts of Europe?

If by "our political ways" you mean our voting system, the UK was offered an alternative voting system, ironically via referendum, but rejected it.

Eta: or do you mean the GE delivered a result you don't like?

Don't get what your saying at all,I'm not political at all but what I do know is our government hasn't done the best job for years have they and continue to mess our country up and we're the ones that pay for it that's all I know

Well I agree with that,tbf.

But we have a new government now and hopefully things will get better, but it is going to be a very long haul.

BTW are you Scottish? Just curious because of the "wifey" in your user name.

Lol no but weirdly enough my grandad is Scottish "maciver" the world is messed up that's all I know and it really scares me

You are not wrong there. But the world has always been messed up in some way or another, but we all keep going.

Very true hun,I also think it's coz there's alot more politics about for the younger generation aswel coz when I was younger I didn't have a clue,but they seem to now,I'm 41 but would say it's only been since covid IV actually started to take abit more notice of it all