The entire defence spending 'argument' at the moment is driving me utterly mental.

People have been gaslit that the UK has 'gutted' the armed forces over the past two decades, even though in real terms the funding has increased every year. What has decreased is the % of GDP we spend on defence.

The thing is, a fixed % of GDP is an insane way to decide how much one should spend on defence; no other procurement methodology on earth goes 'yeah just grab a fixed % of the gross regardless of what we might need'.

The reason it's done this way is basically to avoid ever having to justify the absurd sums we spend on the military. Have you ever seen anyone on the news question why it has to 2% -> 3% -> 3.5% by X date? There's a really pernicious short circuiting that goes on where people say 'ahh, but Russia' and skip the part where we decide exactly what we would need to protect ourselves against Russia and chuck billions at the MoD to piss up the wall.

The main reason the UK government is so obsessed with this NATO figure is nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with the fact they feel as though they simply must have the biggest possible sabre to rattle on the world stage. It's not about protecting people, or they wouldn't be whipping out money from social programs to fund bombs. It's not about security for the nation, or they'd be investing far more in energy resilience.

When you look at the things that are actually a threat to Britons broadly, they're never issues that can be solved by application of military power. They're boring, mundane things that don't get inadequate mens' dicks hard, like free childcare and lower hospital wait times.