00:00To begin with, it's now 17 days since British sovereign territory in Cyprus was attacked
00:06by Iranian missiles. 17 days. And yet, I think that our naval vessel has made it,
00:14Dragon has made it as far as Gibraltar. So by the time we send one vessel to defend British
00:20sovereign territory, it would have been three weeks. And when it comes to aiding the Americans
00:27in freeing the Straits of Hormuz, well, I think in many ways we ought to. I think it is in
00:33our national interest to keep the oil flowing. But we can't. We haven't got the assets.
00:38So I think the first very big lesson that comes out of all of this is that we have denuded
00:44the
00:45Royal Navy and our forces to such an extent that, frankly, we've been humiliated on the
00:51world stage. Our defense spending for next year is due to be just a fraction over the
00:57two percent. And we're going to have to find ways to significantly and rapidly up that budget.
01:03To be fair, this is not all the fault of this Labour government. Fourteen years of conservative
01:10government have run down our armed forces to a state, frankly, as I say, of total global embarrassment.
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