This was in the Guardian last night. David Lammy becomes the next so-called Labour minister to make a pact with the devil, all for the sake of trying to keep a vile billionaire happy.
Lammy, like his colleagues, is saying something he must know to be untrue.
Firstly, there is no need for cuts in anything to fund defence spending. The wealthy could have been taxed more.
Secondly, cutting aid does not solve the problem that if resources are to be diverted to defence, the requirement is not to reallocate just money. The reality is that presuming that the UK is at full employment (which the action of the Chancellor in refusing to borrow more to prevent inflation arising necessarily implies is Labour's presumption) then UK consumption must fall to create physical capacity for defence activity to grow, and clearly cutting overseas aid is just about the worst possible way to do that.
Third, only the wealthy have the plausible means to cut their consumption for this purpose. Therefore, as part of defence decision-making, they need to be required to do so. The gross inequality that they benefit from demands that actual cuts in their consumption are required if additional work in defence is to happen.
I have only met Lammy once (for dinner). He struck me then as a person of very limited brain power, and he has done so ever since. His total incapacity to understand economics was apparent during that meeting (the focus of which was economic issues), and his failure to comprehend the necessary integration of finance and actual economic activity is clearly apparent in the ridiculously embarrassing article he has put out.
Another fool, over-promoted way beyond his ability, has been found out by their desire to suck up to Trump. How many more will follow?
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
As someone I know who works in ‘Aid’ points out from time to time its the absence of things like work and services that drives many people into the arms of Islamists.
By cutting the jobs and services that aid can provide we make the situation worse not better.
Much to agree with. But let’s consider the central hypothesis: “Putin’s Russia is a threat to all Europe, including the UK”. Keeping this statement in hand let us consider some realities.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/25/2306193/-Ukraine-is-about-to-get-the-upper-hand-in-the-war
One link in the article goes to this: The Russian Federation has reduced this year’s recruitment plan for its armed forces by 100 thousand ▪️50% of the ammunition of the Russian Armed Forces is supplies from the DPRK. (the North Korean ammo is of low quailty).
The other link is a one hour examination of Russian losses and its capacity to replace them. This probably gets close to reality (= real numbers). One other fact: Europe/EU/UK controls Euro200bn of Russian assets (Mango-man controls $5bn) That buys a large amount of rebuilding and weapons.
Put all this together & it becomes clear that Russia now is in a wek position. Ukraine is not in a strong position – but as a number of observers have noted: it can quite eaily keep the war going for another year. It would be better to have peace sooner, rather than later – but one aim of that has to be to remove Russia as a threat to Ukraine for a lifetime or until such time as it gets some sort of functioning democracy. Doing that would then mean that Russia was not a threat. Yes Putin is a threat NOW, posing this as a permanent problem is wrong.
Mike, all excellent points and I agree, Russia’s in a mess economically and this needs to be taken fully into account when considering the position with Ukraine and with Trumps approach – which I’m not the only one who believes is driven by Putin’s economic needs.
You might enjoy a person I follow on BlueSky who goes by the handle Prune60. It’s a she and she’s an electrical engineer but undertakes the most detailed analysis of Russia’s economic sector that you can come across – particularly railways, energy and banking. If you get five minutes have a look.
https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social
Inetrsting, I admit
What is the issue about Russian cars?
From Lammy to Lemming – that is some transformation.
You can tell tell that we live in age of fascism because fear is the leverage of everything – from what we can do to what we can’t do.
The editorial comment in The Guardian is however much better… it refers to fiscal constraints being artificial whilst resource constraints are real
I must read it…
It’s just another example of Labour being afraid to do the right thing, and simply pandering to the usual suspects. They probably thought to themselves, which budget can we hit that will give us the least amount of bad feedback. Overseas aid is an easy one to target. The right wing media/press will secretly love it, but will not want to praise Lab because they never do. Had Lab taxed the rich a bit more, the fallout would have been nuclear.
It’s about choices, and Labour has chosen to carry on playing the same game that has got us in the mess that we are in.
It’s just the single transferable party system at work.
“……the fallout would have been nuclear” may win the prize for the most unfortunate phrase of the week!
Bit of a nadir when a ‘Labour’ govt’s policy is to the Right of a recent Cons Foreign Sec. From a Telegraph politics newsletter: “Enter James Cleverly, a former Tory foreign secretary and now a backbench MP, who said this morning: “Increased defence spending is right, cutting the ODA [overseas development aid] budget is a mistake.”
Accusing Sir Keir of “stripping money from the poorest in the world and undermining our global influence”, he continued: “China, Russia, and Iran all buy influence on the world stage. We have just reduced our ability to counter that activity.”
“Captain Keir”‘s dog whistle to Reform voters/Trump is just contemptible. (Leaving aside the real nature of fiat-currency economies).
Would an article on the scale of the developing world’s ongoing debt repayment costs (over $1 trillion per annum) versus western country’s foreign aid be appropriate?
Probably
Noted for the future