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.
A devastating new 44-page report reveals Labour’s cuts will push 400,000 into poverty and cost disabled people up to £10,000 annually, while the government refuses to make savings by cutting spending on war instead, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY
THE Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) has just issued a hard-hitting report entitled Pathways To Poverty, which condemns the government’s Pathways To Work green paper. This well-researched 44-page report totally undermines the many flimsy arguments put forward by the “red Tories” to justify their killer cuts.
The report goes through the effects of restricting Personal Independence Payment (PIP) eligibility, cutting the universal credit (UC) health element and making PIP daily living the gateway to UC health. As the CAB points out, over 1.6 million people, which is nearly half of those currently receiving the daily living element of PIP, stand to lose out with an average loss of £4,500 a year.
Its opening paragraph blasts Keir Starmer and company for their sham consultation over the £7 billion worth of proposed cuts: “By refusing to properly consult on its plan to cut billions from disability benefits, the government is choosing not to ask questions it doesn’t want the answers to.
“The cuts will have a devastating impact on disabled people (and their children), sending hundreds of thousands into poverty, and many more into deeper poverty. This will result from a series of arbitrary reforms that have been designed around savings targets rather than improving outcomes, inflicting hardship on people in ways that the government doesn’t yet fully understand.”
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As the CAB report notes: “A DWP survey of disability and incapacity benefit claimants found that 41 per cent of respondents were on a waiting list for treatment for their health problems, and 50 per cent who were currently out of work felt their ability to work was dependent on receiving treatment.”
Finally, the CAB report makes the point that cutting billions from disability benefits is a false economy as it will merely make many disabled people even more ill, dramatically increasing the demands on the NHS, social services, education and voluntary sector. Besides this, there will be a growing number of disabled people made homeless by these cuts, never mind the increase in the suicide rate which will inevitably follow.
The CAB report concludes with a call on Labour to abandon its cuts, which are a devastating attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society: “The government must reconsider its current approach. We are calling on the government to cancel proposed cuts to disability benefits.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Foreign Secretary David Lammy meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, July 2024. (Credit: Ben Dance via Flickr.)
As British establishment opinion begins to turn against Israel, the hypocrisy shown by government figures like Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who long defended Israeli brutality, is both ironic and infuriating.
Earlier this month the foreign secretary, David Lammy, described Israel’s latest assault on Gaza as ‘intolerable’ and ‘monstrous’ in Parliament. Noting his apparent pain — ‘as a lifelong friend of Israel’ — at having to issue such a statement, he decried the futility of military strategy in recovering the Israeli hostages and defeating Hamas. He condemned the Netanyahu government and labelled the far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich an ‘extremist’. Leaning over the aisle for emphasis, he admonished his Tory counterpart, Priti Patel, for being insufficiently critical of Israel. Lammy announced: ‘We are crystal clear: what is happening is morally wrong, unjustifiable, and it needs to stop.’
Anyone observing the words and actions of the Labour Party over the last nineteen months — in both opposition and government — is likely to have experienced some cognitive dissonance upon hearing such comments. In Lammy’s Tottenham constituency, where I live, he has repeatedly ignored residents’ concerns about his support for Israel, only rarely appearing at heavily stage-managed local events, and cancelling many others. Most of Lammy’s Westminster speech could have accurately applied to Israel’s behaviour at almost any point since it launched its brutal and wildly disproportionate onslaught in October 2023.
So why the sudden change of tone? How did Lammy — and the Labour hierarchy more generally — come to stand so belatedly in opposition to Israeli brutality, after nearly two years of condoning, apologising, and flip-flopping on the war in Gaza?
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But while the condemnation of Israel’s behaviour may be a watershed, the lack of concrete action to oppose the Israeli genocide is far more significant. Any serious response would include, at the very least, a full arms embargo, massive diplomatic pressure, and a refugee resettlement scheme for displaced Palestinians.
But perhaps more Machiavellian motivations are behind the continuing shifts and ambiguities in the Lammyite line on Israel. Pausing talks on a future trade deal leaves the UK’s existing trading relationship with Israel intact. As several backbenchers have noted, there is a logical chasm between the government’s newfound revulsion at Israel’s devastation of Gaza and its continued material support for those operations. While some arms export licences were suspended in September 2024, the three months that followed saw the sale of more military equipment than the total approved by the Tory government between 2020 and 2023. The UK has continued to supply 15 percent of the components to the global pool of F-35 fighter jets used to lethal effect in Gaza — a position defended in court only a few days before Lammy’s tub-thumping speech, essentially arguing that those exports trumped the duty to prevent genocide.
On the same day as the high court hearing, Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence Procurement, spoke at an event for Israel’s Independence Day — commemorated by Palestinians as Nakba Day — during which she celebrated the RAF’s surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. The government maintains that these flights, operating out of the RAF’s Cyprus base, are solely used for intelligence relating to the recovery of Israeli hostages, but it has rebuffed parliamentary inquiries into their exact purpose. Action on Armed Violence has reported at least 518 surveillance flights since December 2023, including 24 in the two weeks before Israel’s attack on Nuseirat refugee camp in June 2024, which killed 274 Palestinians.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspeding 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.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.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.
Keir Starmer – and it follows the UK Labour party – is desperately unpopular. It’s not difficult to see why. He and his Labour party have been pursuing heartless, evil policies – withdrawing energy support for freezing pensioners, maintaining the two child benefit cap condemning poor children to a lifetime of disadvantage, attacking the severely disabled by hacking benefits to complicity and active participation in Israel’s genocide. It is definitely attacking the least able to defend themselves, the actions of a Fascist.
Desperate times are causing Starmer to behave desperately – his racist homage to Enoch Powell, his totally unnecessary attack on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party – unnecessary since there’s not a UK general election for 4 years – and the promotion of militarism in schools, the expansion of UK weapons manufacturing capability and the ability to load nuclear missiles to RAF jets.
It’s not necessarily consistent but it’s an attempt to stir up racism – the speech so that the left supports him against rising right-wing antagonists which he has personally encouraged while he is also appearing Neo-Fascist as is the current fashion, to gain populist support and to potentially escape prosecution for war crimes, the desperately evil cnut.
We need urgent co-operative action on climate not hostile Fascist militarism.
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.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit to BAE Systems in Govan, Glasgow, to launch the Strategic Defence Review, June 2, 2025
