Ralph Raynor

“War is raging and the galaxy is in chaos. Where is Vader?” “He’s on social media slagging off Bruce Springsteen, sir.”

Uh oh! Did somebody try speaking truth to power? In any other era/country, it would be a big deal to fire the head of the Army *during an ongoing war*. Just another day in Trumpland.

Significant

“There will be far greater disruption this summer from French air traffic controllers not showing up to work”

New - Boss of Ryanair says the airline will have to cancel "5 - 10% of flights through May, June and July" if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Michael O'Leary tells @ITVJoel people should book flights for the summer "as quickly as [they] can" to avoid rising airfares.

Why is everyone malding over this? It’s never been customary for the monarch to issue an Easter message. The King released one last year and before that it was the late Queen who issued one in 2020 amid lockdowns. People need to calm down.

North Sea oil and gas:

ZELENSKYY to BBC: We went through difficult relations with Iran. We did nothing to them. They shot down our plane, killed our passengers and crew, didn’t admit it, and didn’t let experts in. Then the full-scale war started. They handed Shahed drones to Russians to kill our civilians. I asked them to stop. They promised there would be only one batch. They lied and kept supplying weapons. That’s why I consider them accomplices of Russia.

Bondi was awful, but no worse than Patel. Noem was terrible, but no worse than Hegseth. Funny that it’s only the women who get fired.

Reform UK has just made what could turn out to be an enormous error. Its Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, has committed the party to retaining the ‘triple lock’ on pensions, whereby the state pension rises each year by either inflation, average earnings or 2.5 per cent, whichever is greater. This follows a period in which Nigel Farage had suggested that the policy was ‘up for discussion’. ✍️ Ross Clark Article | spectator.com/article/reform…

Questioning the triple lock is “far left propaganda”? And, by the way, rather revealing about Reform’s expectations that GB News presenters should toe the party line.

Has he been sacked yet?

“When the conflict concludes” What happens in the meantime?

They were literally telling political editors that he was on suicide watch because he was vocal on jury trials. What sort of individual goes into politics to do that? How do you square that as being ok and the change you want to see in the country?

What on earth has happened to you Rob? You and I both know @KemiBadenoch is right to look at this. You know it’s a wealth transfer. You know pensions are a benefit. You know this. You’ve said this a million times. Why are you pretending otherwise?

There's a pattern emerging.

This is the reality. No-one is going to put warships escorting a slow moving convoy through the Strait in the face of Iranian opposition. Ergo it has to be on the basis of negotiation, as I have been saying from the outset.

Remarks on the Strait of #Hormuz by President @EmmanuelMacron, on the sidelines of the state visit to the Republic of Korea: “We must be able to reopen the strait (…) but it can be done only through consultation with Iran.”

Thanks, Matt. You warned me that they’d come at me. They already had come at me. I will not be cowed. They have picked on the wrong person. I will not be bullied. My dad was a very proud @RMTunion assistant general secretary. He would say “do right, fear nobody”. I will.

My monologue from today’s The Times at One with Andrew Neil @TimesRadio FAILURE TO INCREASE DEFENCE SPENDING A NATIONAL SCANDAL. The failure of the Starmer government to increase defence spending by anything like enough is becoming a national scandal.  The need has never been greater in peacetime. Wars are raging in Ukraine and the Gulf. A revanchist Russia bears down on Eastern Europe. The Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian hands — and closed.  President Trump has gone from rightly demanding NATO’s European members do more for their own defence to wrongly threatening to pull America out of NATO altogether.  Yet the Starmer government sits on its hands doing next to nothing.  It sensibly commissioned a Strategic Defence Review when it came to power in the summer of 2024. That review reported in June 2025.  The government accepted all 62 of its proposals to reconfigure our military and rearm the country. It promised a Defence Investment Plan by the autumn to show how we’d pay for it.  Almost a year later there’s still no sign of it. Neither the PM nor the Defence Secretary can tell us when we will see it.  Meanwhile defence spending stutters, wholly inadequate to the tasks at hand. Trump’s War in the Gulf has exposed just how hollowed out our armed forces have become  — a diminished Navy, most of which cannot be deployed at sea  — an airforce short of fighter jets — a minuscule army incapable of mounting a major armoured fighting force — a country without its own ballistic missile defence.  Yet none of that can be put right on current or planned levels of defence spending.  Of course Labour’s inheritance was a terrible one. Fourteen years of Tory government were marked by a clear deterioration in our military prowess.  In the Cameron/Osborne years between 2010 and 2016, defence spending was cut in real terms by 22%. A fatal fall. Subsequent upticks did little to fill the hole that cut left.  But blaming the Tories only gets you so far. Rather than making up for lost ground the Starmer is largely standing still.  It inherited defence spending in its first year — 2024/25 — of £60 billion. It increased that by a mere £2 billion for 2025/26 — a pathetic amount in a dangerous world. And that’s in cash terms, without taking inflation into account.  It’s added only £3.5 billion — again in cash terms — for the upcoming financial year 2026/27. It barely takes the defence budget to 2.5% of GDP.  Yes, there are bigger rises in the years after that. But it’s still too little, too late — and barely moves defence above 2.5% of GDP.  Starmer has vaguely committed to 3% in the next Parliament — ie the early 2030s — and to 3.5% by 2035, which would be the next parliament after that. But these are only ambitions. There is no roadmap, no blueprint, no budget plan to get there.  Defence spending needs to be ramped up far more quickly than that. Instead, sleight of hand is exaggerating what small increases there are. Ministers try to slip in the intelligence services when counting defence. The cost of helping Ukraine. Unfunded pay rises for the military.  It all means that in real terms even the small uptick in defence spending is not as big as it seems.  There was a time when, as a share of GDP, Britain spent more on defence than any other NATO member bar America. It is a measure of our military decline that we’re now 12th — and still slipping.  The money is there if only there was the willpower to move it to defence — from the massive profligate expense of net zero, from the ballooning welfare budget, from a new time-limited tax, perhaps on luxuries, if that’s what it takes.  Other countries get the need to rearm — Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, Canada, even the peace-loving Scandinavians. But not Keir Starmer’s Britain.  It is his single biggest dereliction of duty. He needs to put it right. Before it’s too late. Or it will be forever the blackest of marks on his tenure in power.