DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Labour runs out of ammo on defence

After wheeling out the heavy artillery to promise the biggest boost in defence spending for a generation, Rishi Sunak was on manoeuvres in Germany yesterday.

On top of his commendable pledge to bolster our threadbare Armed Forces, the Prime Minister also unveiled plans for deeper military co-operation with Berlin.

In Labour HQ, Mr Sunak's vow to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 exploded like a howitzer shell.

It was left to shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry to try (and risibly fail) to explain her party's defence policy.

In a toe-curling Radio 4 interview, she refused to commit to match the PM's funding commitment or even say whether Britain should be on a 'war footing'. With Vladimir Putin and other tyrants on the rise, she lamely promised to hold a review.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer visits the Tapa NATO forward operating base in Estonia close to the Russian border on December 21, 2023

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pictured taking a selfie with German and British troops at the Julius Leber Barrackson April 23, 2024

This was a revealing performance. Labour has always been at best ambivalent towards the military, at worst downright hostile.

Sir Keir Starmer himself believed Jeremy Corbyn was fit to hold the highest political office – a man who has spent his entire career opposing everything the British armed forces stands for.

But a fortnight ago, Sir Keir insisted Labour was now 'utterly committed to our nation's defences'. After yesterday's retreat, that tub-thumping rhetoric seems to have misfired as badly as a broken cannon.

Get over it, Dave!

Like a jilted suitor, David Cameron continues to feel bitter about Brexit.

In a television interview, the Foreign Secretary offered only the most grudging support for Rishi Sunak's Rwanda plan.

Had Britain not left his beloved EU, he moaned, the small boats crisis would be fully under control.

Illegal migrants could have been plucked from the beaches of Kent on arrival, he said, and 'taken straight back to France'.

As an irreconcilable Remainer, Lord Cameron may be wearing rose-tinted spectacles. Or is he being deliberately disingenuous? 

David Cameron addresses students and pro-EU Vote Remain supporters during his final campaign speech at Birmingham University on June 22, 2016

Even when we were in the bloc, the Dublin Regulation – the mechanism for repatriating asylum seekers to the first EU country they set foot in – hardly worked.

Of the tens of thousands who sneaked into the UK in lorries and boats in the three years to 2020, how many did the supine Home Office return? A pathetic 577.

A damning indictment of our porous borders while Lord Cameron was PM is that one minister admitted we were powerless to boot out countless illegal immigrants.

Mr Sunak is trying valiantly to solve the people-smuggling problem. The least Lord Cameron could do is stop the post-Brexit sulking and support him unflinchingly.

Senseless census

The census is the bedrock of statistics. Errors in the data inevitably impede the Government's ability to plan public services.

The 2021 survey was the first to ask about gender identity. Yet an Oxford don has warned the number of people declaring as transgender may be overstated.

The figures showed 262,000 trans people. But curiously, those who spoke English as a second language were far more likely to identify as such. 

The problem seems to be that the Office for National Statistics, after pressure from the LBGTQ+ lobby, asked an absurdly convoluted question that confused non-native speakers.

As a result, this critical data can no longer be relied upon. In future, maintaining the integrity of the census must be more important than pandering to trans activists.