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  • 8 hours ago
Reform UK's Home Affairs Spokesperson Zia Yusuf says that both Labour and former Conservative governments have "hollowed out our military" and accuses the government of "simply making things even worse at a time of heightened danger and risk for the British people". Yusuf says Reform are calling for an increase of defence spending to 3% of GDP. Report by Keechl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00Tory and Labour governments have absolutely hollowed out our military and it's utterly ill-prepared for any form of serious
00:06combat or warfare.
00:07That's not just my opinion. We saw that in real time during this Iran war when His Majesty's Royal Navy
00:12were ordered to dispatch a destroyer into the theatre battle,
00:16could not get one there on any sensible time frame, and in fact got there over three weeks to get
00:21there.
00:21And now it's back in maintenance again. And look, why has this happened?
00:24It's because when the Tories came to power, supposedly the party that, you know, would keep people safe,
00:30well, they cut defence spending from 2.7% of GDP down to 2.3% of GDP, utterly hollowed
00:36out our Navy, hollowed out our army.
00:39And, you know, they dramatically reduced the number of troops at hand.
00:44And so now what Labour are doing is simply making things even worse at a time of heightened danger and
00:50risk for the British people.
00:51We have domestic threat, you know, security services. MI5 have already said that they've thwarted 20 attempted terrorist attacks by
00:58the IRGC,
00:59which is basically the terrorist arm of the Iranian state.
01:03We've obviously got many other threats abroad.
01:07So, look, reform of the first party, to say, back before even the last general election,
01:11we needed to take defence spending up to three and then three and a half percent, maybe even beyond that
01:17now.
01:17let's look at the temple that we are doing at a time as well.
01:17So, let's look at this first-day point in12-199.
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