As Nils Pratley (not my favourite financial commentator) says in The Guardian this morning:
It's a miracle. Babcock International, the defence contractor with a specialism in kitting out the UK's nuclear submarines, has emerged from the depths. After about half a decade in which the story was mostly about cost overruns, acquisition indigestion, accounting woes, pension deficits and too much debt, Babcock is suddenly back in the FTSE 100 index and is a hot stock. The share price has more than doubled this year.
Look at the share price:
Putin could not boost Babcock.
The Tories failed it.
But bring on Starmer and look what happens. Nothing short of a miracle.
What was it that President Dwight Eisenhower said in his retirement speech in 1961? This, I think:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
Starmer has entirely forgotten that decidedly sound advice from a Republican President who commanded Allied forces in Europe in 1944 and 1945.
Why did he do that, I wonder?
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He or his wife needed new glasses or had a spare weekend date and needed some free tickets to an expensive event.
And why didn’t we know about this? We do not own RAF planes. They are paid for by PFI, owned by hedge funds.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/06/dystopia-uk-genocidal-raf-squadron-targeted-by-palestine-action-is-owned-by-a-hedge-fund-and-leased-by-the-raf/
No wonder the government wants to proscribe Palestinian Action.
This has been known since 2000.
Richard
I come here to learn stuff, but this hedge fund ownership of RAF jet fighters is new to me and a new ‘low’ for me – I’m effing fuming. And on New Labour’s watch, as well, this whole thing was initiated ?
This is all kinds of wrong, a big bag full of bad things. This is insanity gone insane. What were they thinking?
Death equals making money and not defending anything, if you want that, it’ll cost extra. You bet it will.
I knew it was bad but not this bad. I stand corrected. Everything is now re-purposed for rent extraction – nothing is sacred. If government is part of the rent extraction regime then what you have is not a democracy, its rent-ocracy. It’s over and my worst fears realised.
We have walked into a trap – a groundhog world, where everyday the tills ring for the rich as they grow richer and we grow poor. We are undone.
It’s not the fighters ownd by PFI – it is the tankers that were painted red. This was done by Brown in 2000 even thought the planes arrived a lot later. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Strategic_Tanker_Aircraft
Known by whom?
I know the new nuclear ones coming to Marham will be owned by the US, along with the nuclear bombs, and it will be the US who will be in control of them. But I didn’t know the ones at Brize Norton were not owned by the UK. Makes a mockery of our airforce, doesn’t it?
Brize Norton is owend, as far as I know.
The planes are not.
Think about how much we have to pay this private company to carry the liability for a plane involved in warfare. As a contractor, there’s no way I would accept that without a healthy risk pot.
Talking of making money, you might be interested in who actually owns the RAF planes damaged by PA at Brize Norton.
(hint: it isn’t the RAF). These are used to refuel Israeli planes involved in the Gaza Ganocide.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/06/dystopia-uk-genocidal-raf-squadron-targeted-by-palestine-action-is-owned-by-a-hedge-fund-and-leased-by-the-raf/
No wonder Rachel Reeves complained about PA “damaging private property”
This has been known since 2000.
Not known by me until today. I don’t think it’s useful to disparage people for late discovery of something which has been rather well hidden. And known or not, it’s still a farce. Governments can borrow far more cheaply than private finance, so every one of these deals represents our Treasury wasting money (unless you view it from the point of view of the bankers who are grifting public money. Then it’s laughing all the way to the bank).
Sorry, I had a decidedly stressful day, not related to here. If that showed, apologies.
These people across the West are utterly delusional. It doesn’t matter how much money one sets aside for military spending because within the deindustrialized West the supply of all weapons and equipment will remain extremely constrained. Trump thinks the US can reindustrialise at the flick of a switch but it doesn’t work that way. It could take 10 – 20 years to reindustrialize and its not even certain whether such a thing is really possible given the postmodern anti-materialist philosophy which has permeated the mind of West. If we increase the money chasing weapons by 500% but supply is constrained to only increase output by 10%, then all that will do is absurdly drive up prices. One ends up with more or less the same amount of stuff but ends up paying 5 times as much for it. That’s economics 101 in regard to supply and demand.
China hasn’t had a measure of GDP with regards to their economy.
( Obvs they have but with little issues);. They have built and transformed their country on a massive, unbelievable scale!
Whilst we were using cheap labour and goods. How the fuck , were we so asleep at the wheel??
So now we are pushing for investment in arms that they already have.
Tbh they are that far ahead we are now Chinese state.
I am beginning to doubt the value of your contributions here.
The above is meaningless.
I would like to know why?
My questioning of each and every one of us is the same. There is nothing cruel or conspiritive with me .
Regardless of your … I do havee something to offer. Kind regards Pat
That last comment made no sense to me. This one has not corrected it. I think you are wasting my time. I do not have time to agonise over commentator’s meaning.
Frank Zappa is reputed to have said that politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex. Regardless of whether Zappa really said this, supposing someone decided to do politics as if it were the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex – what would the result be? Something like Trump perhaps?
What gives the game away for me is when defence spending targets are set as a percentage of GDP, rather than basing a country’s defence budget on the actual and projected costs of defending that country.
https://theconversation.com/uks-f-35a-fighter-jet-deal-problem-the-raf-has-no-aircraft-to-refuel-them-in-mid-air-259821
Something else we didn’t know about the planes we haven’t bought from the US.
They would need to be refuelled halfway to Cyprus.
By the way, Cyprus are getting very worried about the amount of land that Israelis are buying up on the island.