Lord George Robertson: Weaponising Welfare
Lord George Robertson has joined Reform and the Tories in making the case to cut benefits to fund defence: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget,” said the ex-Nato chief.
Speaking in Salisbury, he said: “We are under-prepared. We are under-insured. We are under attack. We are not safe… Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.”
He added: “There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger – but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.”
The British defence budget for 2024-25 is approximately £60.2bn, and there are plans to increase it to £73.5bn by 2028-29, amounting to 3.8% real-terms annual growth.
Many will point out the appalling waste and mismanagement of the MoD. Recently, as Trump called for the navy to join his attacks on Iran neither of Britain’s aircraft carriers and the navy’s largest and most expensive ships, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, were available. They cost more than £6bn, well above the original estimate of under £4bn.
As Richard Norton-Taylor has pointed out: “Maintaining and repairing the ships, hit by serious mechanical problems over their short lifespan, has already cost more than £1bn.” Norton Taylor adds: “Ministers are faced with the prospect of scrapping Ajax, the army’s planned new armoured vehicle, even though more than £6bn of taxpayers’ money has already been spent on the project. Ajax is eight years late, and its defects are so serious that vibration and noise have made soldiers training on it sick, with some suffering hearing loss.”
Last year, again, the National Audit Office (NAO) failed to verify Ministry of Defence accounts.
Missing from the coverage of Lord Roberston’s speech was his current paid senior role for US defence lobbyists, The Cohen Group:
I gleaned this information from the UK Government Transparency website [UKGovScan – UK Government Spending Transparency]. It’s a goldmine of information, including that Lord Robertson has claimed £681.6k of allowances from sitting in the House of Lords.
Lord Profile — House of Lords | UKGovScan
Astonishing cheek from Robertson. Like so many Labour folk he has gone over to the dark side (Tory/Reform) in terms of policies and how they see the world.
There’s a great line from a Brian McNeil song “The Yew Tree” that goes….’when the poor hunt the poor across mountain and moor the rich man can keep them in chains’.
It’s aye been, and thank the Lord (no pun intended) that Bella is there to speak against such fraudulent and bad behaviour. From the Inclosure Act to the Highland Clearances and still now, we have to fight these folk. Please keep up the great work. I wonder if Lord Robertson might get the chance to read this piece?!
I had colleagues in Hamilton around 1980 who had known George Robertson well before he became the MP. They had a high regard for him.
I have known people who, like Robertson, became MPs and also entered the cabinet. I had a lot of time for them, but, gradually our opinions began to diverge and I realised that they and I were living in different milieux.
Even though they had constituency offices and even though in some cases their family homes were nearby their worlds and mine were different and had only tangential connections.
Although they ‘knew’ in a literal sense what the issues affecting many of their constituents were, these issues no longer impacted on them the way they once had.
In their minds there was now a ‘bigger picture’ and consequently, although they did not appear to be aware of it or indicate that they were aware, they had become part of a social class which they had once seen in their younger socialist years as a group who were taking a disproportionate amount of the wealth left after the very rich rentier class had taken a big slice.
The ‘Lord’ conveys a lot more about the current George Robertson than the dictionary meaning.
Old Baron George has turned into a bit of a shroud waver. This was pretty obvious from his intervention in independence referendum when he made the most irrational and over the top intervention basically saying that an independent Scotland was a threat to world peace.
It looks though he has not changed.
@John ‘shroud waver’? No need to mince words. George Robertson is a terrorist.
The main enemy of the ruling classes are their very own public. This is amply documented in declassified cabinet papers (see Suez 1956 etc).
Some of the most dangerous stories to their rule come from the way the British imperial state has killed, injured, maimed, abused and debilitated its own troops. Such happened with the nuclear test military survivors, still seeking justice (although I would have thought joining up with colonial victims might have sent a clearer message on that score). And doubtless there are more scandals to emerge than just the soldiers deafened in the Ajax trials or sexually abused in barracks or bullied by seniors or left at the mercy of failed equipment or shortages in the field). You cannot buy everyone off with immunity for war crimes.
There would of course be more to pay cannon fodder with if the necrotic syphon towards nuclear weapons and ‘face’ projects like our prospective coral reef fleet was snipped. Yet the lesson of WW1, indeed Crimea (poor welfare leads inevitably towards poor-quality human material) seems ever to be unlearned. Not that Russia can encroach very far fighting on one front against Ukraine despite having all the oil it can burn or sell to Europe, and the real enemies of world happen to be leading World Evil NATO or currently waging Old Testament genocide in the recolonial Middle East. If Russia really was a formidable threat, we wouldn’t be bending our economies to support it (while the USA illegally embargoes countries which present no such threat).
Meanwhile our state has already largely been captured by corporations and Zionists, and the British Empire long subordinate to the USAmerican one (see Chagos etc). Our actual defences are precarious (because unprofitable), and our food insecurity dire. Thatcherite offshoring of British manufacturing might be seen as treasonous as Churchill’s Treasury devastation of coal, steel and manufacturing industries to please rentier capitalists after WW1 which gave Nazi Germany such a boost going into WW2.
Aye.
Cut the Welfare and then recruit some of the folk that depend on it to fight in foreign wars.
Sickening in uk politics.
14 April 2026 Adam Bienkov, Journalist, posted this:
“BBC News leading all its bulletins on demands by former Government advisor Lord Robertson for more defence spending, without at any point mentioning his current paid senior role for US defence lobbyists” .
The devil is in the detail , however details and the BBC are often strangers are they not.
A well observed alternative to the divide-and-rule orthodoxy, thanks Mike.
Welfare is a current attack point, along with policies designed to protect the environment, and the Pensions Triple-Lock. (The State Pension is not welfare, but an earned entitlement.There are attempts to conflate the two. The Tripe-Lock was introduced to raise the UK State Pension from its unacceptably low and mean-spirited level).
It’s the cold, bony, grasp of the self-serving British Establishment.
Great photo of the man (no relation!) who told us we have no language, culture or any of that stuff. Looks like he found a good pantomime outfit though.
I’m glad to learn that he’s not some reprobate uncle! 🙂
“Looks like he found a good pantomime outfit though.”
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I was going to add that it comes with a Garter.
Wrong.
Lord Robrtson of Port Ellen is a Knight of the THISTLE.
lol, fit aboot a fitba match: the gude boabs vs the bad boabs, winning team gits tae decide whithir budget gits spent oan o’erseas bludshed or keeping fowk alive o’er here
George Robertson is a Tory.
as are so many robertsons & so many scumbags in for example moray council whom through adherence to an outdated armed forces covenant & subsequent armed forces acts are guilty of facilitating sexual offences against women & children by serving british military personnel