Balram Sampla
Geopolitics
Analysis : Labour Party Conference in Liverpool
(Asian independent) Healey is the walking proof of Labour’s hypocrisy. He quit as Defence Secretary in June 2026 declaring the Treasury was leaving Britain dangerously exposed. A month later he’s back. As a Chancellor, and does the exact same thing he resigned over:
No 3% defence spending commitment, the target quietly pushed into the long grass.
Wes Streeting, current Defence Secretary, warns of ” biggest threat” by Russia and Putin. But his words at Labour Party conference falls on deaf ears!
Meanwhile the army keeps shrinking. Full-time trained strength is down to around 70,000. The whole of the Armed Forces is roughly 182,000. A shadow of what it used to be, right as Russia’s threat grows “daily” and Britain keeps arming Ukraine. Funding someone else’s war while starving your own isn’t strategy, it’s denial.
This government spends where it’s politically safe and dodges where it isn’t. Scrap the two-child benefit cap? Done, £3.5bn a year, because that’s the voter base.
Touch the triple lock? Never.
Fund defence properly? Always “next year.”
That’s not governing by national interest, it’s governing by vote count.
And they’re driving away the people who pay the bills.
Rokos, Ratcliffe, Mittal, gone, chased out by scrapping the non-dom regime and taxing wealth like it can’t move. Lose a few big taxpayers, lose a billion in revenue.
The response? Tax more: frozen thresholds, a mansion tax before it’s even collected, more property and dividend taxes, even as experts warn these hikes routinely raise less than promised.
So what’s left? Borrowing. Won’t cut welfare, can’t fund defence properly, keeps scaring off the tax base, the only lever left is debt. £26bn in tax rises wasn’t enough last Budget; more is already being “teed up” for the next one.
That’s not a plan, it’s a government lurching from crisis to crisis on borrowed money.
Meanwhile, Angela Rayner accuses Home Secretary’s of immigrant crackdown of being ” un- british”. She has support from some cabinet members. Turning into infighting.
Boat people crisis: clueless
