The tranche 1 retirement is hardly news, having been announced in 2021
As I think I posted in an earlier rant, we may be at our near our highest ever taxation as a proportion of GDP but so are most if not all 'Western developed countries' and we are by no means near the top of the list. It is not just higher taxes for defence but for all government expenditure that needs selling to the people. Much though I dislike George Galloway his victory shows that given the right combination of circumstances British electors will elect an individual and not accept the nominee imposed on them by a party machine. It is a truism that governments lose elections, opposition parties win by default. In general elections most people do not vote on the policies of the contending parties but on whether they want to change the government (or because ' I've always voted X'). We don't get to vote on the individual policies, they are just imposed on us in the same way local councillors are elected by a small proportion of the eligible and take decisions that were never presented to the population. Apparently this is democracy.
The statistics surrounding the UK state religion of the NHS are (deliberately misleading) e.g. UK health expenditure is less than France but that is because non-governmment spending is included in health GDP figures. In France you pay to see a GP and an if resident can claim back a proportion (normally 70% of the total less €1), if you stay in hospital you pay the daily forfait €20 and may get it reimbursed by your insurer. (there are low income exemptions). You pay a proportion of the cost of prescription meds not a flat fee. Our religion insists you must see a GP or stay in hospital for nothing and pay a flat fee for prescription meds even if you are an investment banker or commercial airline pilot
. The US is the world's largest health spender as a proportion of GDP but I wouldn't want to be poor and sick if I lived there, it pays 6.5% of its GDP on education as opposed to our 5.5% (which is among the highest in Europe). As a proportion of GDP social spending (public and private combined) in the US is not much lower than UK. The US chooses to afford spending a much bigger proportion of GDP on defence.
As NAB implies personnel costs are the biggest chunk of UK defence expenditure c.26.1% combining military and civilian.
Defence fell from 5th to 6th departmental grouping of UK government expenditure in 2023.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...resources-2023
NATO equipment expenditure target 20% of defence spending - achieved by all members in 2023. Median NATO equipment expenditure 2023 - 27.8% UK equipment expenditure 2022/23 NATO estimate 28.6% MoD Specialist Equipment figure 2022/23 17.5% up from 2021/22. There is clearly a big difference in either what NATO and MoD classify as equipment expense or some serious creative accounting going on. As a comparison, Service and civilian personnel costs in 2022/23 were 26% of defence expenditure down from 29%.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_216897.htm