Tuesday 1 January 2019

2019 wil not be the start of Empire 2:0,

As we start what could well be for us all in the UK a Year of Hell, we face a government that is returning to Jingoism, and  Xenophobia  mixed with incompetence


British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said he is working on plans to build two new military bases in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. It is reported by Telegraph.

“These plans are part of an effort to make Britain a real global player, increasing the country's role in the international arena after it leaves the European Union. We need to clearly explain that Britain is again a global nation,” said Williamson.
He did not elaborate.
The minister predicts that after Britain’s withdrawal from the EU "the political focus will shift quite dramatically" and Britain should deepen relations with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Caribbean, as well as African countries.

Williamson called the plan of action of the British government concerning unforeseen circumstances in case of chaotic Brexit, providing transfer of 3500 military men to a state of alert, “good reasonable planning”.

Britain already has bases in Cyprus, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Diego Garcia island. In 1968, Great Britain left military bases in Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf.


You may well wonder just how we will be defending these islands  from the Caribian and Southeast Asia particularly  as we don't have the ships to do so


Home Secretary  Sajid Javid performed a humiliating U-turn yesterday in the Channel refugee crisis.
Already forced to cut short his safari holiday, the Home Secretary has now bowed to pressure from Tory MPs to recall two ships to British waters.
He had previously insisted the move was a risk and aides repeatedly rejected the idea, saying it might encourage more migrants to make the dangerous crossing.
His about-face implies that two Border Power cutters will likely be introduced again from the Mediterranean to bolster the lone ship on patrol within the Straits of Dover. No less than 139 refuges have been caught crossing from France over the festive interval.
But this has being apparently going on since November and you don't have to be a complete cynic to suspect that this has been overblown in the lead up to Brexit  and the creation of an immigration threat as a headline to bolster support of Brexit.


Meanwhile  Transport Secretary Chris Grayling is under pressure to explain awarding a £14m contract for shipping goods after Brexit to a new ferry company that has yet to secure any vessels. The transport secretary announced on Christmas Eve that the government had awarded £103m of contracts to three companies to carry vital supplies into the UK if it left the EU without a deal. The largest contracts went to Brittany Ferries of France, worth £46.6m, and DFDS of Denmark, a contract worth €47.3m. But the smallest contract was won by Seaborne Freight, a business started only two years ago that has never operated a ferry route. The group, which is run by executives from across the industry, plans to charter two ships by the end of March despite local protesters saying the company will not be ready in time, its chief executive told the Financial Times. Although the company has yet to procure any ships, chief executive Ben Sharp said the business had “opportunities on a number of vessels”, and already had contracts with both Ramsgate in Kent and Ostend in Belgium.
The chorus of a song by G. H. MacDermott (singer) and G. W. Hunt (songwriter) commonly sung in British pubs and music halls around the time of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) comes to mind. It gave birth to the term jingoism The lyrics had the chorus:
We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

Only we don't have the ships or the men , and we are unlikely to rebuild the British Empire despite the ridiculous   ambition of some Brexiters  represented by Gavin Willamson  who recently sent A Royal Navy ship  to Ukraine claiming that it  will send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, 

Only the ship the British Royal Navy deployed to the Black Sea in order to send a message to Russia  is HMS Echo, a 297-feet-long survey vessel,acks heavy weaponry and could not defend itself from intensive attack.
Even a repeat of the the Falklands factor that saved  a unpopular Thatcher government  could not be repeated
Diminished: The UK's defence capabilities are much less now than in the Eighties when it fought and won in the Falklands
You can sabre-rattle how much you like , but the truth is the UK is no longer a World Power and could not unless it spent a huge amount of its revenue (probably bankrupting us) on a rebuilding its forces and that's assuming Brexit will not be a decade of economic disaster.
We will not even have any allies, Commonwealth countries like Australia and Canada will not wan to get involved  and with Europe will say your on your own.
Even a competent UK goverment could not a achieve Empire 2;0, let alone the most incompetent one in recent history.



1 comment:

Leigh Richards said...

Nauseating - the 'Britannia rules the waves' mentality. Thatcher only wanted to take society back to victorian times....these deranged fools want to go back 200 years to the georgian era and Waterloo...