Originally Posted by
El Grifo
......... Since england wrote the suicide note to Europe, they appear to be cast adrift on a sea of misfortune !
El Grifo, I'd suggest Britain's "sea of misfortune" has been around since well before then, in the main, due to decades of successive UK Governments avoiding addressing growing issues across many areas of the UK economy and elsewhere.
That includes, but is certainly not limited to, the continual decline in our Armed Forces meaning that we have to scrabble around to send a ship, belatedly, to the Med. That issue has its roots back in the SDR in 2010.
Today, the decline in the relevance of the UK military in Europe is more to do with the fact that much of Europe is actually spending real money to upgrade their warfighting capability while the UK Government are basically only making "promises" of future spending ...... maybe ........ "if the economy allows" (or some such caveat I saw being trotted out) and, in practical terms, we are left with a legacy of decades of under-investment.
There is some new money but, how many months late is the Defence Investment Plan so we know what is actually being funded and when? And I wonder if the delay is because the Govt didn't realise just how unprepared the Armed Forces find themselves to meet the Strategic Defence Review from last year and so how much it will actually cost to close the capability gaps?
And that includes the very significant "new face of warfare" we have seen in the Ukraine War, and now being amplified big-time by the tactics employed by Iran (to get back on topic!!). Add in the current unpredictability as to what the US actually thinks (OK, it's CiC!) on a day-to-day, if not hour-to-hour basis about, seemingly, anything..... All that's done is make a bad situation worse - for everyone!
So, to blame the whole sorry mess on a "suicide note", even remotely, misses the real, long-standing, Government-wide issues of the last few decades. Well, that's my view of it at all!
Edited to add: Dreadful news re the tanker crew in Iraq. Irrespective of rights/wrongs/politics/egos/etc, we have guys and gals who are putting their lives on the line hour by hour on Duty. Watching just the "visible" manifestation of the Iran war, the constant flow of even just the C17's and KC135's, is quite sobering.