Keir Starmer has been an awful Prime Minister. He’s going to go down in history for shamefully taking winter fuel payments away from pensioners, and decimating the family farming industry.
Under his watch, free speech is being constantly eroded in this country. I wince when I think of what other horrors he will fit into the next few years before another General Election is called.
But, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Keir Starmer has to be commended for one thing at least. The decision to increase defence spending by cutting international aid is absolutely the right one.
It’s frankly unfathomable that the Conservatives didn’t do this when in government. This should have been bread and butter for the Conservatives, but now Keir Starmer’s eaten our dinner.
Starmer's spending uplift falls far short of Trump's and the Ministry of Defence's expectations for Nato spending. PADon’t get me wrong, targeted aid spending is the right thing to do when responding to humanitarian emergencies. But setting an arbitrary spending target for an amount of money to shovel out the door is a recipe for waste, and we’ve seen many cases of this.
Whether it’s eco friendly bathhouses in Morocco or opera shows in China (both of which have received foreign aid money from Britain), too much taxpayers’ money is being chucked away so that wealthy liberals can feel like they’re doing their bit.
It’s the right decision to defund projects like the Ethiopian Spice Girls (another foreign aid goldie) in order to strengthen our defences, and Starmer should ignore the assorted left-wing politicians and charities (which often receive huge amounts of public money) that are desperate to protect a scheme which has paid over half a billion pounds to farmers outside of Britain.
He should not worry about the views of Plaid Cymru, who have claimed cutting foreign aid will allow China to expand its influence.
If we’re worried about China, surely it makes more sense to increase defence spending rather than to send them tens of millions of pounds in foreign aid, as we have done. As usual, Plaid Cymru, who wanted to stay out of World War Two, takes the other side.
LATEST MEMBERSHIP OPINION:
Andrew RT Davies, former leader of Welsh Conservatives
PANow that Keir Starmer has seen the value in putting Britain first when it comes to public finance, he must go further.
He should open the accounts and scrap every diversity, equality and inclusion role in the government, and across the public sector.
He should stop all funding to woke charities that have lobbied against robust policies to tackle immigration.
Charities are supposed to be funded by donations, not handouts from the taxpayer, and while some charities do essential work, like Ty Hafan in the Vale of Glamorgan, so-called ‘charities’ like Sustrans shouldn’t get a penny for their anti-motorists activities that have led to a 20mph speed limit in Wales.
The Welsh Government paid out £668 million to third sector bodies last year alone. The UK Government’s figure will doubtless be much, much bigger. This is serious money, and there are huge savings to be made that we can use to fund our frontline services.
It’s time to put the pounds and pennies of working people back in the service of working people.
