MPs’ warning of hot war is truly chilling – we must face up to the threat early and not sleepwalk into disaster
WE get through politicians at one heck of a rate these days.
Hardly a day goes by without someone in frontline politics announcing they are throwing in the towel.
This week it was the turn of Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to say that he would exit the Cabinet at the upcoming reshuffle, and not stand as an MP at the next general election.
His parting shot should be listened to. Because on the way out of the door, politicians sometimes have the chance to say freely what they might otherwise have held back.
In the case of Wallace, it was an especially big point.
“Towards the end of the decade,” he warned, “the world is going to be much more unsafe.”
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He said that even if — or when — Vladimir Putin loses in Ukraine, he will be a menace.
As Wallace said, the Russian leader has “still got an air force and he’s still got a navy”, and he cautioned: “Putin is not done with us yet.”
But the Defence Secretary’s warning about China was more striking.
Explaining the potential for China to invade , Wallace said: “We will find ourselves in a conflict. Whether it is a cold or a warm conflict, we’ll be in a difficult position.”
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He is absolutely right, and it is high time someone at his level said it. For years, this country has been in a push-me pull-you situation with China.
For years, we have outsourced manufacturing to them. In return, we have had cheap products.
But we have also badly mucked up this country’s supply chains. As well as under-cutting our own labour force.
At the same time we have allowed data theft on an unbelievable, industrial scale. One thing the Communist Party that runs China really excels at is stealing information.
For decades, Chinese companies, acting on the encouragement of their government, have been stealing intellectual property from British and other Western companies.
They have stolen. They have cheated. They have ripped off billions of pounds of our resources.
And we have allowed them to do it. Because ever since China entered the World Trade Organisation in 2001 we have been disastrously intertwined with them.
This is something that an increasing number of defence experts have worried about.
After all, when Wallace warns of a Cold War we need to remember a Cold War with China would not be anything like the Cold War that once existed between the USSR and the West.
In those days, British businesses had absolutely no financial involvement in Russia. It wasn’t like we had all our high street banks also doing business with Moscow.
But today the connection between our system and theirs is incredibly hard to undo.
Take a bank such as HSBC. It is so compromised by China that when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took full control of Hong Kong a few years back, HSBC sided with the Communists.
This is a new development — pro-Communist capitalists.
How do we separate ourselves out from such a system? It is time we in Britain thought about that question.
Then there is the question of a hot war, the even more fearsome spectre Wallace rightly raises. Because in recent decades, China has been working hard on its military growth.
It has been developing islands in the South China Seas that it can use as military bases. It has been flying its planes over airspace of other countries — notably Taiwan.
And it has been watching with great interest to see how the West responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As a result, the CCP now know many, if not all, of the measures the international community can and can’t take against a rogue state.
They know what we cannot do, what we do that doesn’t work and what we are fearful of doing.
This has all been exceptionally interesting for China. And it has learned a lot. More than we seem to have done.
Managed decline
The heads of the RAF are still playing stupid identity politics games to try to adapt the service to the stupidities of modern Britain.
For example, they have gone along with recruitment targets for women and ethnic minorities, that last year meant an effective halt on recruitment of white men.
That is nonsense. But a reminder of the unbelievable gap in seriousness between this country and our challengers and potential foes.
China is looking to expand. Territorially. And as a global power. It wants to project force in the world.
We, by contrast, seem to be in a stage of managed decline.
A stage where even a war on the edges of Europe, like in Ukraine, is not enough to wake up our country.
Our political and military leaders try not to face up to threats.
Our political class — and the highly political figures leading our military — say what they think will get them credit at home.
It is time we had leaders who are willing simply to confront the threats that we — and the world — face.
Because, as Wallace knows, to face up to a threat early is to be able to deal with it.
Contrary to what the Greens, peaceniks and other naïve idiots preach, it is the best way to avoid confrontation.
Put reality off and you are not dreaming of peace. More likely, you will sleepwalk into disaster.
PERHAPS the strangest policy of the last Labour government was its aim to make 50 per cent of young people go to university.
I never understood the target. If 50 per cent, then why not 60 per cent? Hell, why not just force everybody to go to university?
Just one reason is that the more people you push into university, the more likely it is that the quality of the universities and their courses will go down.
The present Government has realised that, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week attacking “rip-off” degrees and “low-quality courses”.
Bizarrely enough, Labour has responded by saying this is the Conservatives trying to put a “cap on aspiration”.
They should get out a bit more. There are plenty of ways to aspire and succeed in life without university being involved.
And there is something not just wrong, but actively cruel, about urging young people to run up debt to get a degree which isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
WHAT’S UP , YOU DOCS?
OF all the strikes that keep rocking the country, the doctors’ one seems the worst.
First, because there is something wrong about the idea of doctors going on strike. It seems not just selfish but actively unethical.
Second reason is, we’re hardly talking about people on the breadline.
There is something pretty galling about people on £128,000 a year moaning about not getting a 35 per cent pay rise.
The is complaining that the rise is needed because of inflation.
Well, here’s news for them. Everyone desperate to see a doctor is suffering from the same money problems.
So, well done to the BMA for identifying inflation as an issue.
But its members should be at work diagnosing even more serious problems.
The ones that us taxpayers pay them to deal with.
A BREW HA HA
AN American soldier made a dash into North Korea this week in one of the worst decisions taken by anyone in living memory.
Having been to the country myself, I can tell you that if the soldier ends up staying, he won’t be having the best of times.
Half a dozen American military defected to the North after the Korean War.
None had a great life. Most found their best companions to be local liquor soju, and North Korean-made beer.
Having tasted both drinks, I can’t recommend either.
Dated, leftie BBC failing in line of duty to licence payer
THE BBC knows it is in trouble.
Behind the headlines, the corporation’s figures are bad.
The number of people paying the licence fee fell by 500,000 last year.
In an age of smartphones and Netflix, the idea of everyone paying a tax for owning a television seems wildly out of date. One by one, the justifications for the licence fee have fallen away.
The BBC used to claim it provided uniquely improving content. No longer.
There is almost no educational programming and the once-lauded BBC dramas such as Line Of Duty, are almost always now out-classed by the big streaming services.
But it’s not just that which rubs some of us up the wrong way. Rather, it is the Beeb’s endless talk about impartiality while displaying no such thing.
Never mind its highest-paid star, Gary Lineker, forever displaying his boringly predictable views on politics, look at what happens to BBC presenters when they leave.
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As one particular podcast shows, the BBC presenters who pretended to be impartial while there all come out as wildly anti-government leftists the moment they leave.
Maybe those of us who thought they weren’t impartial were right?