EXPOSED: THE UK/ENGLAND A POOR COUNTRY STILL PRETENDING TO BE RICH

UK pays what the financial markets call a “moron premium” on the debt it borrows

STARMER DELUSION ON AIDING UKRAINE SECURITY

On BBC Radio 4 Today programme at the start of the year, Justin Webb, one of the best BBC journalists, stated as an accepted truth that the UK is a rich country. It isn’t true. It is a myth, one that the independence movement has to bust at every opportunity.

To say UK/England is unable to pay its way is an understatement. It gets deeper in debt every minute. The national debt now is £2.93trn and will hit the £3trn mark this year. The OBR forecast is £3.5 trn by 2030-31. The Treasury anticipates a debt interest bill of £135bn for 2026-27, more than the £90bn it intends to spend on defence. £1 in every £10 the government spends, goes on debt interest. It now pays what the financial markets call a “moron premium” on the debt it borrows – in short it must pay more in interest than other countries.

By busting that false claim of being rich, and contrasting what we can do with our natural and vast energy resources, we give the Scottish people the best reason for peeling off from England.

Stay with England and continue the remorseless decline in broken Britain, or peel off and escape into a better future? To that question there is only one sensible answer: Independence.

But it is not the question that the SNP is putting front and centre as the election campaign gets underway. John Swinney had a wonderful opportunity last week when questioned on the Today programme about whether he would agree to sending troops to a Ukraine security force once the present war ends. He said yes when he should have said no, and taken the chance to drive home the message that broken debt-ridden Britain is in no position to send significant numbers of troops and equipment anywhere. He should have stripped bare the Starmer delusion of UK intervention and influence.

There is no worse thing a government can do than to commit its armed forces to a potential combat role they are not equipped to meet. It borders on the criminal to do so.

John would not have needed to offer his own opinion. He could have cited General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO. This retired General could say in public what present serving senior officers can only opine in private.

Quote from the General: “We are left with the unedifying impression of a British PM making promises he knows he will never be able to keep, to maintain a pretence, perhaps in part because his position is so weak domestically – that the UK is a significant player in world affairs.”

The General has pointed out that the Ukraine battlefront which any UK-French force would have to monitor and defend is 800 miles long. It took 50,000 troops (10,000 from UK) to defend Kosovo, which the General, who was there, describes as a “pocket handkerchief” compared to Ukraine.

He has outlined professionally what a UK 10,000 number in Ukraine would require: 10,000 on the front line, 10,000 preparing to replace them, and 10,000 retaining after deployment. Six months or perhaps one year of that effort he says “would sap every ounce of our military strength”. He points out that troops need to be well armed, and notes what is the open secret in the army, that “our arsenal from tanks to bullets has already been supplied to Ukraine” with doubts everywhere within the military that it has all been replaced.

UK/England is a skint paper tiger militarily. The consequence of a poor country pretending to be rich.