It is disconcerting, to put it mildly, to receive an analysis of the state of the UK’s defences with the headline “The state of Britain’s armed forces – time to panic Mr Mainwaring”.
But that is what Prof. Andrew Dorman has produced for the UK in a Changing Europe and it just confirms everything we already know. Weak spending, bad spending, no strategy, ever changing plans, top heavy, under staffed, under funded and with HM Treasury making decisions on what weapons are available.
Defence needs more money in almost every area.
For example, attracting young people to serve means offering them reasonable pay and conditions, both of which have got worse. But when recruitment falls the Tories cannot admit that they may be at fault and that their austerity policies are the root cause of all this. It must be the “weak” young who have been seduced and corrupted by cafe lattes and avocados.
A perfect illustration of the double thinking at the heart of the Tory party these days. We are right, therefore when something goes wring it cannot be our fault, there must be another explanation, no matter how risible and dumb it is.
Take the coming budget, anyone can see there is no room for tax cuts and if there is any money available it needs spending on defence and the NHS.
But this Chancellor’s party now believes that cutting tax rates brings in more tax revenue, as an article of faith. So even his most jingoistic back benchers will call for tax cuts. It didn’t work for Liz Truss, but she was betrayed by the Blob, let’s try again.
But just think for a second; how many countries when faced with a war have said “First we must cut taxes to bring in more money, then we can buy the weapons and fund the armed forces?”
Warring countries would desperately be trying to out compete each other by slashing tax rates further and faster, so that more money would flood into the Exchequer.
“Gott im Himmel” the Nazis would have exclaimed, “that gangster Churchill has abolished income tax altogether, we are doomed.”
Why did we borrow and tax to the hilt in two world wars? Why did every other nations do the same? Did none of them realise that lower tax rates were the route to overwhelming victory?
You just have to think about the absurdity of that scenario to realise immediately that cutting tax rates leaves governments with less money. Otherwise all governments would be slashing rates all the time.
There would be riots in the streets as tax payers begged the government to increase the tax rate and let them keep more of their own money.
Even the spurious logic behind all this, that lower taxes increase economic activity and therefore overall income, is strangely unsupported by the facts.
Strange, isn’t, it that the Cayman Islands and Jersey are not economic super powers yet. Maybe they just need to slash taxes more.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
The paradox they're facing, assuming the UK enters the war before a general election takes place, is that they'll be forced to enlist conscriptees from the cohorts of the weak-willed latte-soaked generation they've been demoralising, demonising and emasculating for the last decade and a half. Image how red their faces will be then!