Re: Hmm@A J Stiles
That's what I thought you meant. My point was that even if you cancelled the entire defence budget of £40bn, the government would still be spending £80bn a year more than it gets in income (plus £10bn for welfare and foregone employment taxes currently recycled from the defence budget), and even that isn't sustainable.
I agree that we'd save a lot of money if we adopted a Swiss style approach to defence, of simply being able to defend our domestic territory in the British Isles by a very large armed reserve force. Whether that makes sense I'm not sure - we'd have to renounce territorial claims to the Falklands, Antarctica, and any territory that is remote from the UK. We'd have no part in well-intentioned international missions such as Kosovo, Sierra Leone or Libya. We'd have no transport or military skills to contribute to international disaster relief. We'd have no ability to contribute to international missions such as combating piracy off East Africa.
The "little britain" mob would probably like this a lot. On the other hand, is it right to go all pacifist for a country that is easily in the ten largest economies in the world, is hugely influential politically, and deeply involved in global trade? If France and the UK hadn't stuck their necks out over Libya, it would have been another Syria, there would be continued fighting even now, and probably 100,000 civilians dead (as Russia and China have allowed to happen in Syria). I don't anticipate any gratitude from the Libyan people, but surely as one of the world's largest and most advanced economies, there's a time when you have to do the right thing, and part of that is building the capability in advance of the need?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
