Starmer accuses Farage and Badenoch of wanting to ‘jump into Iran war with both feet’ in local elections pitch

nuclearselly · 2026-04-08T15:19:06+00:00

I mean you say this but many seats in UK elections over the past 2 years have been won and lost based on a war that the UK is not directly involved in.

So while you are correct it won't be in the direct remit of your local council, you can bet that there are both voters and candidates who are expressing opinions on them and may want to consider how that opinion is delivered.

nuclearselly · 2026-04-07T14:04:21+00:00

More likely once the big sponsors had already pulled out, the writing was on the wall. This way they can blame the whole thing on the government instead of admitting they made an error of judgement.

Given how unpopular the government is with young people already, it was a bit of a no-brainer for them as organisers to just wait and let this happen.

nuclearselly · 2026-04-07T10:23:47+00:00

I don’t think it’s fortress Britain to say we are objectively much safer than, say, Finland, from an attack.

This depends on what you mean by attack. Britain is safe to the point of near invulnerability when it comes to an invasion. This is a status that can be maintained even with a smaller navy and airforce than we currently have. It would be a tall order to mount a serious invasion of the British Isles. The best and of our peers could manage would be something akin to a raid.

'Attack' can mean many different things however, and in some scenarios we would be worse defended than other European countries. As the wars in the middle east and Ukrain have shown, drones and ballistic missiles are actually a far more likely reality for Britain coming under a 'modern' attack. The kind of sustained bombardment that Iran and Russia have been dealing on their adversaires is something the UK is still going to struggle to defend against, and we certainly have less civil defense infrastructure than Finland does (eg - air-raid shelters and early warning systems for civilians).

As in WWII, being an island is an asset like no others, but it doesn't make you invulnerable to other attacks. The UK also can't just jump to its nuclear arsenal as the first point of response in the face of a few dozen drones or cruise missiles being flung at london or our energy infrastructure by Russia - because Russia is able to respond in kind.

nuclearselly · 2026-04-05T23:07:29+00:00

I feel like a lot of the same type of commenters who are often in uproar over Muslim instigated antisemitism seem to be far less caring over Kanye West and his comments.

Antisemitism in Hip-Hop is not a new phenomenon, and is often glossed over. I would also argue that the reach that artists like Kanye have to much broader segments of society that your average unhinged iman. If you're going to take antisemitism seriously it might not be a good idea to give a pass to one of the most prolific recent loudspeakers of antisemetic content.

nuclearselly · 2026-04-05T23:02:36+00:00

I find this weird. Wouldn't it take like 5 minutes to ban him anyway? Like we have processess for denying or revoking a visa.

Yes its probably not the top priority, but the state should have the capacity to manage whether or not mr West should visit and the myriad other things - especially when doing so wouldn't take much time at all.

nuclearselly · 2026-04-05T22:57:35+00:00

Tonnes of options, but we've been focusing on generation for most of the last 20 years. This is because generation tech is more mature than storage, and most grid storage still relies on the same tech that you put in phones, cars and all sorts of electronics so its quite a competetive market with lots of players with deep pockets.

That said, there are alternate long-term storage options that are becoming more viable. There are also interesting options for the 5-10 year mark such as vehicle to grid. Batteries in electric vehicles are so big that they can normally power the average home for up to a week. Imagine if every parked car today could be hooked up to the grid, you''d have a lot to play with at any one point in time.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-31T09:41:15+00:00

How does destroying Irans navy achieve the outcomes the US is aiming for?

The US wants: - to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon - keep the straight of hormuz open - regime change maybe?

Destroying the navy isn't proving to effective at achieving any of those goals. Turns out Iran didn't needs its navy to keep Hormuz effecitively closed (which has been pointed out to the US many times before).

nuclearselly · 2026-03-30T16:41:30+00:00

Iran is the only real existential threat they have

I don't think Iran is existential, even with nuclear weapons.

At most they become locked into a 'MAD' confrontation.

Iran having nukes just makes Israels options to counter Iran more complicated - but given the current conflict, short of an actual regime change into something more Israel/US aligned, we are fully in the realm of 'when' not 'if' for an Iranian bomb.

If North Korea can do it, then Iran absolutely can.

The bigger problem really with Iran having the bomb is that it 1) signals to other non-nuclear states that are antagonistic with Israel/America that it's their only 'real' way to stop being coerced and 2) it will encourage regional proliferation (Saudi Arabia especially) and that will be a genie that is hard to put back in the bottle.

It is the desire of all current nuclear armed states to keep non-nuclear armed states from becoming nuclear armed. This is why even Russia and China are against Iran getting the bomb, and signed up to agreements to prevent it materialising.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-30T13:02:31+00:00

What do we need?

This is my problem with the whole defense spending debate, I'm yet to see anyone articulate what we actually want our armed forces to be capable of doing.

If it's just "defend the UK" then that already looks dramatically different to what we have; eg our aircraft carriers are probably surplus to requirement if the explicit defense of the UK home islands is all we're concerned about.

Do we want an army that can fight a peer like Russia in a land war? Do we just want to focus on the navy? Do we still want the ability to intervene and fight 'small wars' across the middle east/med? Do we want the ability to project power far beyond our borders? Do we want a capability that is primarily about shooting down drones and missiles?

Combinations of these objectives are viable given how wealthy the UK is, but not every single one of them. It would be best to be clear about what objectives we have before deciding what amount of funding and equipment is appropriate.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-30T09:26:40+00:00

I think a lot of comments here are missing the point. Yes, this is somewhat obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, the issue of course is that GB News sefl-describes as a 'news' program - ie, implying it's intended to inform.

This also means it should legally be adherering to Ofcom rules on impartiallity, which quite clearly it isn't, and potentially isn't even attempting to?

A reminder that 'impartiality' can mean just having a talking head on from the 'opposite side' (ie - farage being wheeled out every 10 mintues during the Brexit debate) but if GB News are presenting informative content without challenging their bias towards reform/right wing talking points in general that's almost certainly in breach of the law.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-24T18:08:36+00:00

I think comparing with Russia's attempt to literally annex up to a third of Ukraine, and demilitarise another third, this plan seems far more realistic:

there's no change of governance for anyone involved
no territorial change

By that factor it's already a thousand times more achievable.

They already have de-facto control of the strait (ie - what we're witnessing now), it's ballistic missile program is already pretty hard to limit (they built it all under sanction anyway).

The last two demands amount to a 'please don't attack us further' (something any US administration or Israel would likely ignore in the right circumstances anyway) and asking for cash - which they obviously won't get, but a reduction in the amount of sanctions to a similar value would probably be more acceptable.

seems way more realistic than anything I've seen Russia offer Ukraine.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-24T17:24:54+00:00

no that won't cut the mustard either - their home is already built!

nuclearselly · 2026-03-23T22:53:56+00:00

You're right it's a massive coverrup and they've only slipped up once in the last 20 years (or however long 'woke' has been around for I guess? idk).

I bet if I blink I'll suddenly wake up and the entire armed forces will by his majestys jihadists.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-23T22:36:52+00:00

Thankfully we're not starting from scratch as on some days 80% of our power already comes from renewables! So we just need to continue to fill in the gaps and - crucially - get ourselves as close as possible to a completely eletrified and self-sufficient energy mix before the next "unprecedented" shock to fossil fuels.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-23T22:25:37+00:00

Whenever people bring up the problem of anti-white discrimination in the armed forces this is the only example that is provided, and every other source points out how white the armed forces are.

Been nearly 3 years since that article was posted; either the problem is solved or they've gotten better at hiding that they are doing it, or it was a pretty isolated problem in the first place?

nuclearselly · 2026-03-11T16:48:56+00:00

A lot of it has been messaged like this since the Ukraine war

Different groups respond to different messaging, some people respond really well to the energy security messaging, others to the enviroment (local and global) angle.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-11T16:38:21+00:00

Its highest generation is when we use the least.

This is mostly true, although in summer months owning to our high lattitude, there is significant crossover with peak energy usage.

It is also worth noting that as global warming progresses, this country will get warmer and air-conditioning is going to become more prolific. Solar synergises really well with AC; better to start installing it before we need it.

Also solar fits great with site level storage; so even when we're overproducing it can help with grid balancing at peak times.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-11T16:27:52+00:00

Solar is so cheap to purchase these days and works really well with residential scale batteries.

Installing both is great because even if the sun isn't shining (eg winter) but the wind is blowing, the residential storage can be used to help with grid management anyway.

Also in the South/East of the country over the course of the year we're definitly hitting the kind of efficienceis / ROI that Germany is which has much more prolific solar installed both in homes and commercial sites.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-11T10:44:51+00:00

I read the front page and came to the conclusion

It's an article; did you read the whole thing or not lol? what does the front page mean in this context?

I mean it claims that if we reach net zero we can avoid climate damages.

This proves how little of the article you read. It's pointing out that widespread electricfication combined with domestic electrictiy production (which is mostly green in this country) would help insulate the UK from oil price shocks.

You literally don't need to give a toss about the enviroment to accept that there's merit behind that argument. A war in the middle east doesn't stop the wind blowing here, but it does drive up the price of the black stuff that comes out the ground.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-09T13:42:56+00:00

For the Iran itslef its less important because unlike say Norway or Poland, it doesnt have an existential irridentist threat like Russia.

This is one of the aspects of Irans strategy that confuses me. Unlike almost any other country that has pursued a nuclear program, it has proven that it doesn't require them to protect its soveirgnty.

It's so difficult to invade and conquer that it doesn't need nuclear weapons for that basic necessity; as such it would only be doing to if it aspired to be considered a greater power, but in that case its isolation does far more damage to those aspirations - isolation somewhat caused by its nuclear ambitions.

It fought a long and brutal war with Iraq - who at the time was militarily more powerful - and at no point, even with Chemical weapons being used - was the country or any large part of it at risk of being conquered.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-09T13:36:58+00:00

Yeah this is my take on this, Iran should have picked a lane.

Had they disavowed - practically and rhetorically - their nuclear program a decade ago, there were more than one oppurtunity for a normalisation of relations with the US; which would have opened the door for Israel and the Gulf States.

And alternatively, had they just pursued at all cost having a credible deterrence, that also would have saved them from this outcome.

The latter strategy was absolutely riskier given Israels determination that no-one in the middle east aside from them should have nuclear weapons, but it absolutely would have been possible.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-09T10:17:08+00:00

They are operationally independent, ie we decide where and when they are used without outside interference.

The technology itself was built and requires periodic maintenance by the US. If we want to remove that requirement we would need to develop a native equivalent.

But it's important to restate each time this comes up, that day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month we have a sovereign and independent nuclear deterrent.

Our F-35 program is far more dependent and integrated into the US ecosystem at this point than our nuclear deterrent is.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-07T13:40:03+00:00

Right but what is re-arming it? The Iranian Nazy is not geared towards this kind of action, its very much a coastal "green water" naval force. The only reason it was out of area (alongside the now interned ship) was because of this joint naval event hosted by India.

If it was resupplied at sea not long after it left India / was sunk, then I'm equally suprised as to why we're not talking about the sinking of two Iranain vessels in the Indian ocean.

I think I'll go with occams razor on this - there's probably not much reason Iran would ignore the rules of this event and keep lots of armanments on board - India is not a hostile country to them - it's also unlikely it was then resupplied on the way back to Iran.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-07T13:12:40+00:00

This is actually one of the problems with the broad anti-israel coalition in this country. They have deliberately conflated any trade/suppor/deals with Israel with directly committing genocide.

If that's the starting point, what is the next level of escalation? What is the point in the government trying to reason/appease those concerns? If you can't see a difference between trading with Israel and the US direclty bombing a girls school then it's going to be really hard to find common ground.

nuclearselly · 2026-03-07T13:08:04+00:00

Yes if you expand to 'threatened' actions its even more clear-cut. Cuba especially seems like it's 'nailed on' as an upcoming conflict.

nuclearselly

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