The Tories are buying warships, but will they work this time?
The Tories are buying warships, but will they work this time or will they stall, or leak, or have something else wrong with them?
Those are the questions that have to follow the announcement that Rishi Sunak’s government is tying the UK into the increased defence spending it has previously announced, by buying at least three amphibious warships for the Royal Marines.
Remember the six brand-new Type 45 destroyers that David Cameron bought for £1 billion each, back in the early 2010s? They were supposed to become the backbone of the Royal Navy – but they didn’t work.
In an email seen by the BBC, a serving Royal Navy officer wrote that “total electric failures are common”, prompting This Writer to suggest that they were now the broken backbone of the British fleet.
They were eventually fixed at an extra cost of tens of millions of pounds, because the Tories waited until their warranties ran out before doing anything.
How about the £3 billion aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth – intended to be the Royal Navy’s flagship – that sprang a leak during its sea trials that meant it was taking on up to 200 litres of sea water every hour?
The flagship of the greatest seafaring nation in the world – and the Tories couldn’t even make it watertight.
Now we have at least three new Multi Role Support Ships for the Royal Marines Commando Force, designed to transport them to coastlines to conduct special operations and be able to provide urgent medical care – at an undisclosed cost.
Defence Secretary and long-term spiv Grant Shapps has said this investment is only possible because the government has committed itself to increasing the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of the government’s total budget.
So this is not about national security – it is about tying the hands of a future government (that is expected to be run by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party).
If Labour is forced to honour an ongoing commitment to build warships, then the money won’t be available to use on other projects – that might, for example, help ordinary people cope with the increased cost of living foisted on them by stupid Tory policies over the last 14 years.
Then the Tories will be able to criticise Labour for failing to make good on its promises.
It’s how they behave and some of us have seen it all before.
Rather than deliver positive change for the good of the country, Rishi Sunak and his gang of cut-throats want to waste public money sabotaging the future.
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Starmer’s budget is changing all the time due to his U-turns, lies, and cancellations. I have been a socialist all my life but this Labour party is NOT for the workers, or the country. This is Starmer’s ticket to power.