Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Reacting to the Strategic Defence Review and Keir Starmer’s speech earlier today outlining the government’s defense spending plans, Ellie Chowns MP, who holds the defence brief for the Parliamentary Green Party, said
“Keir Starmer is sounding like he is on a war path with his “battle-ready, armour-clad nation” rhetoric. Security is not just based on arms expenditure and threats, but on real leadership that uses diplomacy and development too. There must be a real commitment to an international order based on human rights, equality and genuine cooperation.
“To avoid the horrors of war and armed conflict, we need to look at the deeper causes of insecurity, including poverty and climate breakdown. This is why the Green Party strongly supports the restoration of the international aid budget to at least 0.7% of GNI. And we will continue to argue that real patriotism means ending UK-made weapons or components being sold to dictators, human rights abusers or for use against civilians anywhere in the world.
“The prime minister has talked up the boost to jobs and the economy through increased defence expenditure, but there are many more jobs of the future to be created right now in the clean, green – and peaceful – economy, a sector growing four times faster than the rest of the economy. This is where the government’s focus for investment should be if they are serious about a secure and resilient future.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer (centre), Defence Secretary John Healey (second right) and Managing Director of BAE Systems’ naval ships business Simon Lister (right) speak to a member of staff during a visit to BAE Systems in Govan, Glasgow, to launch the Strategic Defence Review.
LAUNCHING his government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in Glasgow yesterday, Keir Starmer set out his mission to “Make Britain safer and stronger. A battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities equipped for the decades to come.”
It might have sounded more convincing had he delivered it from inside a suit of armour, perhaps in the manner of a Monty Python sketch. The sub-Churchillian rhetoric was, as usual, embarrassing. The self-delusion was boundless. And the underlying intent is as criminal as it is suicidal.
One would think that Britain is some poor defenceless lamb besieged by ravenous wolves, not the world’s fifth-biggest nuclear weapons power, the sixth-biggest military spender and the seventh-biggest arms exporter (notably to Middle East dictatorships and genocidal Israel).
But for armour-clad Sir Keir, this is not enough. More nuclear warheads, each with three times the killing power of Hiroshima. Thousands more missiles to deliver them across vast tracts of the globe. More nuclear and conventional submarines.
And six new munitions factories, boosting our military-industrial complex already swollen with many billions of pounds that would otherwise be wasted on homes, schools, clinics, hospitals, civil defences, green energy plants and low-carbon transport systems.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
Continuing from the most recent Thoughts of the Day, the climate crisis is the most urgent issue for security increasing ignored by Keir Starmer’s UK Labour government. Starmer’s ramping up of hostile militarism is a backwards move that will further aggravate huge climate effects that should instead be addressed urgently. We need urgent, fundamental, transformational climate action urgently. Starmer’s government is following Trunmp’s lead in neglecting – actually ignoring and actively disregarding – the climate crisis.
Hostility to Russia is fake, manufactured nonsense which should have been abandoned decades ago. Ukraine is a proxy war resulting from hostile, unnecessary militarism, Russia is concerned about a hostile NATO increasingly threatening and encroaching on it’s borders. Russia’s concerns for the persecution of Russian-speakers from Fascist militarists should have been respected.
Starmer is attempting to gain widespread support for his right-wing, authoritarian militarist project. A better path would be a widespread rejection of this BS, persecution [oops, I mean prosecution] of genocidal Fascists and to address the climate crisis urgently. Starmer’s hostile militarism is going to get derailed by climate regardless – severe climate effects are increasingly dominating all and everything. The sooner climate issues are properly addressed the better.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg speaks surrounded by other participants in the latest Freedom Flotilla Coalition effort to deliver shipborne aid to Gaza, during a June 1, 2025 press conference in Catania, Italy. (Photo: Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)
“No matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide,” said climate activist Greta Thunberg, who is aboard the Madleen.
A dozen Palestine defenders including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and a French lawmaker set sail from Sicily on Sunday aboard a boat carrying humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, many of whom are starving amid Israel’s ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege and decadeslong naval blockade of the coastal enclave.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said it launched the sailboat Madleen—named after Gaza’s first and only known fisherwoman—from Catania, Italy at 4:00 pm local time Sunday “in direct defiance of Israel’s illegal and genocidal blockade.”
“Madleen symbolizes the unyielding spirit of Palestinian resilience and the growing global resistance to Israel’s use of collective punishment and deliberate starvation policies,” FFC said in a statement Sunday. “The ship is carrying urgently needed supplies for the people of Gaza, including baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.”
The international volunteers aboard Madleen include Thunberg, French Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan, German refugee advocate and FFC steering committee member Yasemin Acar, Brazilian FFC steering committee member Thiago Ávila, Al Jazeera reporter Omar Fayad, French doctor Baptiste Andre, French journalist Yanis M’Hamdi, Turkish engineer Şuayb Ordu, and crew members Mark Van Rennes, Reva Seifert Viard, Pascal Maurieras, and Sergio Toribio.
“I am aboard Madleen because silence is not neutrality—it is complicity,” said Hassan, who is banned from entering Israel due to her outspoken support for Palestinian rights. “The Palestinian people in Gaza are being starved and slaughtered, and the world watches. This ship is not just carrying aid, it is carrying a demand: End the blockade. End the genocide.”
Thunberg said that “we are seeing a systematic starvation of 2 million people. The world cannot be silent bystanders, Every single one of us has a moral obligation to do everything we can to fight for a free Palestine.”
The Madleen‘s launch came a month after the Conscience, another FCC aid vessel traveling in international waters off Malta, was attacked twice, presumably by Israeli forces. No one was harmed in what FFC said was a drone strike on the ship. However, the activists were forced to abort their humanitarian mission. Israel has not commented on the incident.
Madleen also set sail nearly 15 years to the day after Israeli forces raided a Gaza Freedom Flotilla convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. The attack—which also came in international waters—left nine people including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan dead.
FFC said Sunday that the “unarmed and nonviolent” mission “poses no threat” and “sails in full accordance with international law. Any attack or interference will be a deliberate, unlawful assault on civilians.”
Those aboard the Madleen said they were aware of the dangers they faced. Israel has killed numerous Western activists and journalists who document its human rights violations over the years, and just last month Israeli troops opened fire on a group of international diplomats visiting the illegally occupied West Bank two days after three involved countries issued an ultimatum to stop annihilating Gaza.
“We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying,” a tearful Thunberg said during a Sunday press conference. “Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.”
“And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide,” she added.
Activist Greta Thunberg says silence is more dangerous than sailing to Gaza, as she boarded a vessel that will try to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla had to abandon its last attempt on May 2 when it was bombed. pic.twitter.com/ieecZ8ps0E
Some Israelis and their supporters took to social media to wish harm upon the activists. In the United States, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) alluded to past Israeli attacks on Gaza aid flotillas in a social media post saying, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”
Israel strongly refutes allegations that it is committing genocide in Gaza. South Africa has filed, and dozens of nations support, a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The International Criminal Court, also located in the Dutch city, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and starvation as a weapon of war, in Gaza.
Officials in Gaza say that more than 192,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured since Israel launched its assault and siege following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, a figure that includes at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble and hundreds of mostly children who have died from acute malnutrition and lack of medical care.
Around 2 million Gazans have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, amid Israel’s campaign to starve, conquer, indefinitely occupy, ethnically cleanse, and possibly recolonize the coastal strip.
Each side accuses the other of thwarting cease-fire efforts. On Saturday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff rejected what he called Hamas’ “totally unacceptable” proposal for a truce in which 10 living and 18 dead Israeli hostages would be exchanged for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy toldDemocracy Now! on Monday that a cease-fire proposal mediated by Witkoff is “a bad deal for the Palestinians that will allow Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing of Gaza” and “walks back the commitment for a permanent cease-fire, Israeli withdrawal, and allowing in of humanitarian aid.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit to BAE Systems in Govan, Glasgow, to launch the Strategic Defence Review, June 2, 2025
Anti-war campaigners warn Britain is on course to become more militaristic as Starmer unveils massive programme of new arms spending
BRITAIN is on course to become a militaristic society with a war economy as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer unveiled his government’s strategic defence review today.
Sir Keir pledged that Britain is becoming a “battle-ready, armour-clad nation with the strongest alliances and the most advanced capabilities, equipped for the decades to come.”
And he unveiled a massive programme of new arms spending, setting the military budget to soar to 3 per cent of GDP over the next 10 years.
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Arms monopolies shares soared on the news of the spending boost, which will come at the expense of welfare and overseas aid, with tax rises also possible.
Equally chilling was Sir Keir’s claim that society must be put on a war footing. “Every part of society, every citizen of this country has a role to play,” he said.
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Sir Keir stressed that Britain was prepared for conflict. “We are moving to war-fighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces,” he said, with Nato the central commitment.
His plans were rejected by veteran left Labour MP Diane Abbott, who said: “It is not true that more military spending will boost the economy.
“It is a terrible waste when public services and our basic infrastructure need funds. It is a scandal when welfare is being cut.”
And former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn argued: “If the government cared about people’s security, it would reverse cruel cuts, end child poverty and pursue an agenda for peace. Let’s fund welfare, not warfare.”
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
