'Ethical' UK Military spending to jump

And surprise, surprise - English Labour agrees....

Rishi Sunak announced two things in Warsaw yesterday.

First, a hike in UK defence spending from 2.3 to 2.5% of GDP, an extra £87 billion per year by 2030, to put the UK ‘on a war footing.’ NATO’s target is 2%. Spending will rise from £64.6b this year to £87b in 2030. English Labour has vowed to do the same.

Both are oblivious to the fact that military spending fuels domestic inflation. Public spending that doesn’t provide a service to the community, never enters the market or meets community demand, creates inflation.

Second, Sunak proclaimed that investments in weapons companies meet ethical (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria, saying “There is nothing more ethical than defending our way of life from those who threaten it.” The Treasury and the Investment Association, the UK investment manager trade group, naturally agreed.  

Sunak’s pronouncements follow hot on the heels of Congress’ $95b military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, money that will flow into the bank accounts of weapons manufacturers, collectively known as the Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

Sunak says the money will come from trimming the civil service to pre-Brexit levels. The neoliberal Institute for Fiscal Studies said the pledge means cuts of £8-9b a year in councils and courts. Both pretend that the government needs to ‘borrow’ money when it can just order the Bank of England to create whatever it needs. Because most people believe the myth that taxes fund government spending, this will be an excuse for the UK to inflict more austerity on its long-suffering citizens and enrich companies like BAE Systems, the UK’s largest weapons maker.

As for looming foreign threats, Sunak offers no credible evidence that Russia intends to invade the UK or the EU. NATO chief Stoltenberg admitted that NATO expansion was key to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying, “he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” In other words, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine as a prelude to taking over western Europe.

Investments in weapons are neither ethical nor environmentally sound. Over half the 93 countries with whom BAE Systems does business score lower than 50/100 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). And the world’s largest single emitter of greenhouse gases is the global war machine led by the US, UK and Israel.

Scotland suffers most from UK militarism, being forced to accommodate the UK’s nuclear arsenal minutes from our largest city. Scotland’s cancer rate is significantly higher than England’s. Could it be due to London’s decision to concentrate nuclear waste, power (Sellafield, the most toxic nuclear plant in Europe, has for decades been polluting the west coast of Scotland) and weapons faraway in its northern colony?

What more evidence do we need to end this failing union?