The Beating Heart?

Honestly, the number of Conservative MPs, plus the entire right wing of the Labour Party, who are khaki festishists and who ought to be given toy planes instead of Ministerial portfolios. Gavin Williamson wanted a network of new bases in the South China Sea, until someone asked him where exactly they were supposed to be located, and who exactly was supposed to staff them.

And today, Dominic Raab has had to deny that the former budget of the Department for International Development was going to be diverted to unspecified military projects. Again, staffed by whom? Britain's existing military activities are already heavily dependent on what are, for want of a better word, mercenaries. This recession, which like any other is discretionary on the part of the Government, will not alter that.

Still, Boris Johnson has abolished DFID, but not what it does, such as the promotion of abortion on a staggering scale around the world. Since the debate is now open, let in be joined. We need the specification in the Statute Law that the United Kingdom's aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country's own, but with the money thus saved remaining within what we are once again going to have to patronise the world by calling the Overseas Aid budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target still resolutely intact.

Meanwhile, since the State has as much of its own currency as it chooses to issue to itself, take the £205 billion cost of Trident that is cited by CND, round it up to £210 billion, and then give an extra £70 billion to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. This would be within a context in which military force itself would be used only ever in self-defence, while BAE Systems had been renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification in order to preserve the skills that were currently employed in the arms industry.