Reform is boycotting today’s Welsh Parliament session in solidarity with Joe Martin, their member. “If you silence one of us you silence us all” says Helen Jenner, Reform’s newish Welsh leader…
Yesterday he was told he wouldn’t be invited to speak in the Senedd again until he said sorry for a question the presiding officer thought was “unnecessarily provocative and deliberately offensive“. He asked about “the demographic replacement of white British people taking place in the UK”…
A banana republic style move from the Senedd. People get elected to say things and ask questions…
It is Angus MacIntyre. At Old Billingsgate, in the City of London…
Reform struggled to appoint a spokesman for a very long time because candidates kept failing vetting. This one is also ‘Shadow Armed Forces Minister’, now Shadow Defence Secretary…
Reform has announced RAF Regimented officer Angus Macintyre will be the party’s defence spokesman. They’re keen to boast about his military credentials compared to Labour and the Tories. “His 40 years of military service alone exceed the combined total of Labour’s entire defence team, with just two of their five ministers serving over 31 years between them…”
Farage said this morning:
“Having someone of Angus’ stature and calibre speak for us on defence shows how seriously Reform UK takes protecting the interests of Britain’s military.
“Angus has more experience than the entire government defence team combined. He is representative of our drive to bring into politics people with high-level and real-world experience – as opposed to career politicians – to run government departments.”
Farage is introducing Macintyre at a press conference later today…
Danny Kruger, Reform’s head of preparations for government, has put his name to a new Prosperity Institute paper calling for the Army to be cut down to one fully-resourced division in order to prioritise the Royal Navy and RAF. Trade-offs…
The new report from the Prosperity Institute argues that successive governments have spread the forces so thin they can no longer do any one job properly. It calls for a ‘maritime-first’ strategy to 2035…
The report argues that the Navy should be built around hunting Russian submarines and guarding undersea cables and pipelines. Home waters, then the North Atlantic, the gap between Greenland, Iceland, and Britain, the High North and the Baltic. Additional proposals include:
Kruger endorsed the paper:
“Dominating the waters around our islands is a must for any government serious about national security. This paper helps to outline some of the trade-offs that will involve, and calls on Britain to make the investments necessary for our defence.”
The paper is also backed by former Chief of the Defence Staff Field Marshal Lord Richards, Penny Mordaunt, former Chief of Joint Operations Lt Gen Sir Charles Stickland, and former Defence Attaché to Kyiv Rear Admiral Tim Woods. Bring back gunboat diplomacy…
Mail commentator Dan Hodges – who was kind to Burnham during the Makerfield campaign – now concludes: “The truth is Andy Burnham doesn’t have a 10 year plan. He’s barely got a 10 week plan.“