0:01
It's pretty pathetic, and it's par for the course for the government, sadly. And John Healy, to his credit, is one of the better or least useless ministers
0:09
So if he doesn't even know, it's no wonder that people like, I don't know, Rachel Reeves and all the others, and Lucy Powell, sound so much worse
0:16
And as I say, he's one of the better ones. Just to get the numbers right, of course, that we know about, anyway
0:21
when it comes to defence spending, aren't they using the money that we're giving Mauritius to give them Chagos in our defence budget
0:29
So when they say they're increasing the defence budget, actually, that involves us paying to give away sovereign territory, doesn't it
0:34
Yeah, it is, and it's one of the most disastrously stupid things
0:38
this government is doing, and that's pretty much... And that's certainly saying something
0:43
We don't have to spend £9 billion giving the Chagos to Mauritius
0:47
All we have to do is say, actually, we're keeping it, and we could be spending that £9 billion on a lot of other things
0:53
whether it's winter fuel, whether it's supporting pensioners, whether it's supporting schools, or indeed supporting defence
0:59
There must be certain bits of this, Bob, though, sorry, that you do support, presumably the idea of school leavers
1:05
and college students doing a year in the armed forces, because I actually think that was Rishi Sunak's policy, wasn't it
1:10
It was not dissimilar to Rishi's policy, but actually, look, I do support it, because, look, for me
1:15
I loved my time in the army, I was a reservist, and then I was mobilised for a decade
1:21
on something called full-time reserve service. And if I had my time again, I'd do it properly
1:26
and I joined the army at a much younger age I nearly did it when I was 18 then decided not and i think it a great career and i absolutely really recommend it um likewise ref likewise navy uh and if we can
1:39
draw people in i think they'll find it just structured and exciting and it's got some
1:45
discipline and you do adventure training and actually learn to pride in yourself pride in
1:49
your country and we don't have enough of that at the moment so that bit works yeah it's a shame
1:54
and they slagged off Ritchie's ideas, but, hey, you know, that's hypocritical Labour for you
1:58
Well, there we go. I can't help but wonder, though, whether or not the Tories do have to shoulder some of the blame here
2:04
I mean, under the Conservatives' watch, the armed forces, I think, is at its lowest
2:08
pretty much lowest ever level in recent times anyway. And you've also had issues like the RAF
2:13
discriminating unfairly against white men. Yeah, it's not been great that we've been put in this position, is it
2:19
No, and I'm not going to sit there saying it was all great. look, Putin started the new Cold War in 2007
2:25
If we were smart, we would have monitored that. We would have built up our deterrence
2:29
You're completely right, Patrick. The reality is that deterrence is expensive, but it is also always cheaper than fighting
2:36
And the fact is we're now spending a lot of money arming Ukraine, or reasonable sums of money arming Ukraine
2:41
because deterrence has not worked, because Putin thought we were weak. He didn't think we'd defend or support the Ukraine
2:48
and he didn't think the Ukrainians were going to fight. So if he understood our deterrence and if he was deterred
2:55
we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now, and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people
3:00
wouldn't be dying on the other side of Europe. Just quick
