Sir Keir Starmer must bazooka more Labour sacred cows to...

FOR years The Sun has railed against the obscene waste of our foreign aid. Only a tiny fraction ever did any good. So it is right to take billions from that budget to bolster our defences against Russia and China. Given how painful that is for some Labour MPs, Keir Starmer deserves considerable credit for doing it.

Image Credit: The Sun [Keir Starmer with British soldiers at a NATO base in Estonia.]

Increasing our forces’ budget from 2.3 to 2.5 per cent of GDP in two years is hardly a game-changer. Three per cent could be, though that’s nine years off. But hiking spending IS the right call. Significantly, as the PM prepares to meet Donald Trump, it was welcomed by the US Defence Secretary as a “strong step from an enduring partner”.

Unlike many of his MPs, Sir Keir now knows how hard being in power actually is. And he must find more steel to cull other ideological Labour fixations and release billions more for defence along with tax cuts to foster growth. The crushing welfare burden. NHS waste. Net Zero madness. And the £9billion-plus Chagos Islands fiasco which looks even more inexplicable now.

Sir Keir has been left holding the baby after decades of scandalous under-investment in our forces. He must bazooka more Labour sacred cows to truly fix it. “WARMER homes, lower bills” . . . Ed Miliband’s pledge last year was a blatant deceit. Homes got colder for OAPs stripped of their heating payment. Energy bills have soared three times in seven months.

Across Britain once-thriving, decades-old firms are closing, destroyed by the world’s highest electricity prices. Families owe billions in unaffordable bills. And still Labour’s witless Energy Secretary claims Net Zero is the solution, not the problem we all know it to be.

He could green-light fracking and North Sea drilling for cheap UK-made energy. He refuses, merely expressing false concern — like a drunk driving a bus off a cliff telling passengers: “I know how worried you must be.”. Today Miliband’s zealous allies at the “Climate Change Committee” which advises the Government will make matters worse, releasing a one-sided report packed with swivel-eyed optimism about Net Zero saving us all money one day.

After, that is, we have bankrupted ourselves buying battery cars and heat pumps and given up meat and holidays. It’s electoral poison for Keir Starmer. PM . . . Miliband has sold you a pup. SO the YR4 asteroid isn’t now going to smash into Earth at 38,000mph.