Is Starmer going to be the next warmonger Labour PM?

Right, so as Keir Starmer attends his first foreign visit as PM, it would of course have to be the US and just happens to be a NATO summit, where he has announced that we do just happen to have enough money to be able to increase out defence budget spending about the 2% required by NATO, to 2.5%, though it should be noted he hasn’t set a timeline on doing that as yet. Still, the fact he can announce that, without even needing Rachel Reeves to hold his hand says to me the money for it will of course be there, there is always money for war. And to lend further weight to my argument on this, there has of course been the military aid donation to Ukraine, which I spoke about the other day, comparing that spending, to refusing to lift kids out of poverty, everything is a political choice after all, but in addition to that as well, Starmer has also told Ukraine they can use our weapons to bomb Russia and handed out a £1bn government contract for a new hypersonic missile!
And coming back to Reeves of course, it was two days ago that she announced that despite pledging a mass housebuilding program, there will be no council housing whatsoever, because there’s no money and we need the private sector to provide. In other words, to make profit and who will be able to buy these houses once built in which case?
Right, so when it comes to public investment and the example I’m using here is housing before I get onto the defence budget stuff in a moment, the cost of building new housing, Labour’s 1.5m houses in a parliament construction scheme, where NIMBY’s beware and Rachel Reeves will be coming for the Green Belt if it’s a spot deemed ugly, by we know not what measure, will be relaxing planning regs or overturning local objection if needs be to get planning through, this seems to be the not particularly coherent narrative on this. What is also the narrative is that the government are putting no money into this, apparently we don’t have any which is of course nonsense, instead relying solely on the private housebuilding sector to deliver these homes, not putting money into local government to let them building housing, council housing, though they will be expected to identify areas where housing could be built, suitable areas at local level, which hopefully is where such housing would go, that local knowledge is utilised fully. Yet despite apparently being prepared to let the private sector deliver on this, Reeves still claims that the right mix of housing will still be provided, there will still be affordable housing and housing for social rent.
So are you buying this housing off the developers then and if so how much are you going to buy to deliver on the right mix? Are you leaving it up to the private building sector to decide, because that has always worked out so well in the past? Will Housing Associations be expected to take on social housing built and will they have to pay for it? Will they be delivering on the construction of said houses and what if they can’t afford to as some HA’s are not as well off as others?
I can’t see how the government cannot put some money into this at some point in the line. The housebuilding companies will want to make a profit, providing discounted housing eats into that, they’ve always kicked back at having to provide affordable housing, the likely scenario is they’ll put the prices up on the other housing they’ve built, so who will they end up being affordable for?
We need housing, but I’m heavily sceptical of the delivery of this.
Yet once again however, government spending elsewhere reveals that we absolutely do have money and it is an arbitrary choice to spend on some things and not on others and in this case, with Starmer announcing significant military spending, once again the question becomes one of priorities and housing people who are homeless, stuck in B&Bs, overcrowded due to lack of housing and the right housing mix, just don’t rate as highly as bombs do.
So Starmer is at the NATO summit, where he is to encourage other nations to increase their defence spending by announcing that we will increase ours from 2% to 2.5%, which will increase the cost of defence to £87bn annually. Message to Liz Kendall who complained the other days that disability benefits are costing more than the defence budget – not after this they won’t, but then the question is, when ill this actually take effect, because on that, Starmer has not made a commitment, yet has also told us that defence is actually his number one commitment. Says everything when it comes to asking what exactly he stands for.
Luke Pollard, now Parliamentary under-Secretary of state for Defence did give an indication to Kay Burley as to when that would be and the news is that this will apparently happen after a strategic defence review, which will need to be completed urgently. When asked how urgently, he said about a year. Pretty urgent then. So Starmer is telling others to cough up more, when he won’t be coughing up any more himself, according to Pollard, for at least 12 months if not longer, these things can run over after all.
But while he prats about at NATO, one nation not a member, not yet anyway, is Ukraine, for whom more aid will be announced by Genocide Joe and to whom more military aid has been sent already by Starmer as I covered the other day, but not only has Starmer sent Ukraine weapons, they’ve told Ukraine they can use our weapons against Russia directly. Up until now, all military aid we’ve sent has had to be used in defence by Ukraine, but Starmer has ostensibly lifted that restriction on Ukraine, ditched that and confirmed as much whilst on his flight to Washington:
‘Starmer, who became UK prime minister last week, is in Washington for the Nato summit. Speaking to reporters he said decisions on the use of UK-supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles were for the Ukrainian armed forces to make, indicating they would be permitted to strike against targets within Russia.
The UK military aid was “for defensive purposes but it is for Ukraine to decide how to deploy it for those defensive purposes.”
Asked about the strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv, Starmer declined to call it a war crime, saying “In relation to its specific category within international law, that will be a matter for others in due course, but it is shocking and appalling and it’s the duty of everyone to describe it in those terms.”’
The Russian response has been to effectively call Starmer irresponsible for escalating tensions and according to several media outlets, Russia claim to be studying captured Storm Shadow missiles to assess how they work, having secured downed or misfired missiles and as such they may be less effective moving forwards than they have been, though as is always the case, no amount of missiles will ever end a war. Try convincing Starmer of that.
Perhaps this is what has prompted the development of a new hypersonic missile in which case, something that was under consideration under Sunak’s Tories, but which is now being pushed ahead with, another £1bn apparently magicked out of thin air by a nation with no cash as we apparently are and Starmer Labour has even got McLaren on board to assist the Ministry of Defence in this:
‘McLaren has joined up with the British military as part of a wider £1billion hypersonic defence project in a bid to optimise "effective decision-making."
“The MOD partnership with McLaren’s Accelerator team is centred around shared learning and improving decision making processes to help achieve a high-performance culture and operational efficiency," a McLaren spokesperson said of the news.
"McLaren Racing is in no way involved in developing any technology or weapon capabilities with the MOD,” the McLaren spokesperson pointed out.
The defence project comes amid ongoing tensions with Russia and China, weeks after the government faced widespread criticism over defence spending.
Hypersonic missiles can manoeuvre while travelling faster than Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound and makes them difficult to intercept.
Hypersonic missiles are designed to reach far higher speeds than standard cruise missiles and are considered an integral part of modern defence systems.
Recent years have seen Russia and China both flex their military might where hypersonic missiles are concerned.
Russia unleashed Kinzhal and Zircon hypersonic missiles in Ukraine as part of their ongoing offensive.
A number of Russian missiles in the region have previously been downed by US Patriot rockets, despite claims from Vladimir Putin that the weapons were unstoppable, The Sun reported.
Meanwhile, China test-fired two hypersonic weapons in 2022 as part a show of force.’
So we need hypersonic missiles because China and Russia have them, making us less safe, but if Ukraine feels it’s best method of self defence is to shoot missiles we give them directly at Russian territory, that is fine.
Make this make sense.
Starmer has cosplayed as a soldier on numerous occasions previously, but now he’s fully got little Keith out waving him around as part of a global willy-waving contest that actually isn’t making us more safe, but significantly less so and he’s managing it all despite the fact we apparently haven’t got any money to spend.
Well another area where he isn’t looking for or leading on a peaceful resolution, is the matter of Israel and Gaza, where the Lancet medical journal has just revealed what is likely a truer figure of the cost of Israel’s genocide, supported by Starmer, still denying he advocated for war crimes, the death toll according to the Lancet likely 4 times higher than reported currently by the Gaza Health Ministry, who themselves have reported casualty numbers of more than 38,000 people. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.