Ben Wallace: To be or not to be?

For British Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace MP the issue is pretty clear: to be or not to be? British politicians have been claiming that after the USA, Britain is the second most powerful country in the world and one wonders on what such claims are based.

Spending less than 2 per cent of the budget on Defense, Britain is below the 2 per cent required by NATO and with less than 80,000 troops the country is behind Germany in terms of capable combattants. Even Margaret Thatcher that is now in history as the one Prime Minister that was at the helm in 1982 when Britain faced Argentina in the South Atlantic was about to mothball the navy right up to the point when the country had to embark in a naval campaign for which NATO resources had to be moved south and private ships had to be used to transport troops. Lucky for Britain that the Harrier jump jets were available and were the key for success as Britain had completely underestimated the amount of resources it needed for such endeavour.

Today, reality tells us that Britain is not fit for war. Britain was not fit for war in Iraq and Britain was not fit for war in Afghanistan. Even when it acted as second fiddle to the US, its failings were immediately apparent. When you send troops to a theatre of war in vehicles that are not fully armoured and were only meant for riot control, you know that something is extremely wrong. As soon as they drove over landmines, British soldiers were turned into mincemeat. Britain's capacity to move troops around was very limited as there were no enough air transport resources and British commanders had to use American aircraft to move around in a theatre of war. 

Talking about the present conflict in Eastern Europe, if you give away British military resources and you don't invest to replace or increase British resources you know, once again, that things are extremely wrong. The country could run out of ammunition in a week. Britain build two very expensive sea mammouths at a huge cost only to realize that they were not fit for purpose. One of the biggest embarrassments were massive ships that were not sea worthy.

It was Ben Wallace that had to counter statements made by Rishi Sunak regarding the deploymenty of British jets in Ukraine stating that sending jets would undermine British security because it would trigger retaliation against the British homeland. But I am sure that it was Ben Wallace's awareness of the present state of the British Armed Forces that pushed him to act without delay to reject the promises made by Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. Who could be the right Prime Minister if Britain faces the prospect of a protracted European War? I am sure that many Conservatives are asking such question. An opportunistic Boris Johnson? Bureaucracts like Lizz Truss or Rishi Sunak? Lizz Truss herself support a 10 per cent reduction of the British Armed Forces while at the same time trying to sound threatening on the world stage.

Eleven billion Pound might sound like an impressive amount of money, but it is just money. You need to train human resources, you need time. You don't build reliable Armed Forces on the hoof. Politicians and Church leaders seem more interested in promoting homosexuality and social decadence than in promoting a Britain that is fit for purpose and capable of performing in a theatre of war. In a country in which supporting illegal migrants is more important that supporting Britons, you know in which direction the wind is blowing. When local populations rebel against invasion and are labelled 'Far Right extremists', you know that the political system is rotten to the core.

Rotten to the core by militant homosexuality, social decadence and the destruction of British identity, Britain is not fit for purpose.