Comments by "" (@shamrock141) on "Keir Starmer announces rise in defence spending to 2.5 per cent" video.

  1. Good, we need a standing armed force that can readily repel threats, can't believe there are Tories (hopefully a minority of them) who think this is a problem whilst Russia is actively invading a European nation, complete hypocrites.
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  2. That's just not feasible, the money has to come from somewhere and the economy isn't doing well though to jump the defence budget up by multiple tens of billions of pounds
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  3.  @JackBurton-q8l  no it's not, just because it happened 55 years ago doesn't mean it's feasible now. In 1970 for example the demographic of retirement aged people in the UK (age +65) was 13%, now it's almost at 20%. That is millions worth of more people taking out pensions, public services and the NHS, net negatives to the economy. Also in 1970 the UK was a much better manufacturing centre, with manufacturing contributing 30% to the total GDP, now it's at roughly 17%. The actual output of British products has dwindled dramatically and the strain on public services has risen steadily, the service sector is unreliable, if taxes are raised companies start setting up in foreign countries with low corporate tax rates, the UK is in an uneasy situation right now. The only way to hit 5% is to completely scrap a load of public services, that will immediately result in a massive uproar and then Labour is voted out in the next general election and the defence budget scrapped again. The only way for this to work is to make sustainable increases to the budget, pledging an extra 13 billion pounds is already a tall order, 150 billion is just ludicrous.
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