The United Kingdom Elections 2010

[Furunculus]

You know that Louis makes a lot of sense.

You even agreed to it yourself that he was correct, however, you further comment that they should have spent more. Which goes in opposition to your earlier comments that it is basically all new labours fault for keep on clawing it back when it was the Tories which did the most damage.

they haven't done 'most' of the damage.

events dear boy, events - to quote a british prime minister

the end of the cold war, (where we spent 40 years deterring the might of the red army along with our allies), was always going to require a peace dividend. Keeping BAOR in germany and holding the G-I-UK gap was no mean feat, especially as it didn't give us a free pass from all our other global commitments.

i have never advocated a return to defence spending at a level of ~5%, or even 3.5% of GDP, what i have actually advocated is:
> a legislated peacetime minimum of 2.5% of GDP (which is what labour said they would attempt to maintain in the SDR 98)
> an annual review to see if we are in fact at peace, and if not to recommend the appropriate increase (currently at ~2,1% during wartime)
> a temporary hike above 2.5% to recognise to recover from decades of under investment (and the fact that we were fighting two foreign wars at once on a 2.2% budget)
> absolute recognition that ALL operational costs including attrition are paid for by the treasury (not the situation now)

and i will apologise to nobody for criticising labour for taking a further bite out of the core defence budget last month to fund afghanistan, especially when the defence budget itself has fallen 0.3% below the level labour said they would maintain.