Our Armed Forces must no longer be short changed – even in tough times

War footing

EVEN in tough times one department must no longer be short changed: Defence.

Our Armed Forces are not a luxury to be funded properly once the stars align.

Other budgets must be cut to do so now.

When ex-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says this Government and the next must commit to hike military spending to three per cent of GDP he is dead right.

We fear Downing Street does not yet get this.

It still mutters about affordability.

Does Labour grasp it?

Does Keir Starmer get that if elected he might spend five years defending us from a military threat unseen in eight decades?

Is he up to it? Does he understand how depleted our forces are — and the tough choices he would need to make elsewhere to fund their rebuilding?

Tories who believe the threat of war could be an election game-changer for them are dreaming.

But we pray Starmer is alive to it.

If he wins power, as polls predict, it could dominate his every waking hour.

Kremlin con

THE easiest way to prove Vladimir Putin’s re-election was a sham is that his “rivals” are still breathing.

Anyone brave enough to genuinely oppose him is exiled, jailed, poisoned or mysteriously falls from a building.

It’s true not all of Putin’s 87 per cent ticked his box under duress.

Some believe in the tyrant because their insular worldview is wholly shaped by Kremlin lies about the wicked West, Ukrainian “Nazis” and Russian strength.

There are six more dark years ahead for Russia, including its many expat dissidents who cannot return home.

And for the West, too, which must along with Ukraine protect freedom from a nuclear-armed thug.

Renew Labour

SOUNDS promising, doesn’t it? Labour’s first 100 days, laying the foundations of a “decade of renewal”.

It reminds us of “levelling up”, a genuinely crucial Tory idea blown off course.

And this renewal might have legs if there was a brass farthing spare to fund it. We don’t see it.

A Labour Government would inherit all the economic woes and problems Rishi Sunak is copping flak for failing to solve.

And we have said above that defence should be the new priority.

Yet growth is weak, millions are unable or unwilling to work and we are labouring under a £400billion Covid debt.

And there is £16.3billion to be found merely to fix the potholes on our crumbling roads.

How would Labour raise that?

Wannabe Governments always announce grandiose plans before the reality of power bites.

They should remember what Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.