Labour and the forces

Lonesome Dave

David,the use of words implying help for the Armed Forces and Labour in the same article is bloody shameless given their actual record (on the same) in office.

AngloWelshDragon

Labour have no real affinity for the Armed Forces. They have just noticed the popularity of Help for Heroes etc and want a bit of the action. Self serving and shameless as usual.

pete-s

Murphy was minister for Europe, putting through the Lisbon treaty, saying that labour had not reneged on giving a referendum. Yet another lying scot!

English Radical

Join the Labour Party for £1?

It is illegal for any British soldier, sailor or airman to join any political party at all! Do these idiots know nothing?

Greenslime

They (Labour) is relying on the hope that the population as a whole as as many long-term memory problems as it (Labour) clearly has!

Either that or we are seeing chutzpah in action.

Dave B

Didn't they already try that £1 membership thing?

If price drops aren't helping, perhaps they should compete on quality instead? :-)

Edward Sutherland

Can't see why our armed forces would have faith in any of our main political parties.Conservative, Labour and Libdem have all treated them shabbily.

Sir Everard Digby

Indeed Murphy does have sufficient gravitas for this platform...From uni via the NUS to a seat in the House. Zero work experience of substance,unless you count his growing media pronouncements.

Labour want to politicise everything - in this case they have added a new twist -you pay for it yourself. Still,better than throwing borrowed money around I suppose.

So what exactly

HiFli

As a current serviceman can I just express my extreme gratitude to Jim Murphy's very kind offer of Labour Party memebership. I really thought my life couldn't get any better. Christmas really has come early this year- of all the things the services need right now this was top of the list

Nicholas

Labour Party membership, which they keep very quiet about, is about 0.25% of the population but within the BBC is probably more like 99.9%. So of course the BBC view of the world reflects this and presumes that everyone in Britain thinks like Labour.

Axstane

Labour or any other political party must be prevented from politicising the armed forces.

Any country that has allowed or promoted that has suffered periods of military rule.

Colin

Can you imagine the previous labour regime, with a politicised, compliant and politically loyal armed forces at it's disposal?

Nothing short of a f*cking nightmare.

Imagine creatures like blair, brown, balls, harman or straw having the ability to deploy the army to solve their political problems; chilling...

Vulture

@Axtane:

Military rule is exactly what we need.

Since the Army is the only institution in this country that still works well, and the three main political parties are committed to foreign rule in the shape of the EU, a military coup would be widely welcome.

Pity we lack a Cromwell.

Baron

why not go a fuller Monty, promise to refund the £1. Tossers.

Axstane

Vulture

I am not surprised that you have undemocratic ideas. Verity will agree with you provided we bring back the birch and hanging.

It is hard to decide which of you is the barmier but you, in particular, must be in your element now that Heffer is at the Daily Mail where you also lurk.

David Ossitt

“Murphy revealed a plan to allow servicemen to join the Labour party for just £1”

As much as that?

Surely not.

Are they worth a pound?

Cynic

Deeds, not words. Labour by its actions shows it a) despises the armed forces, b) cynically uses them and c) keeps them chronically underfunded and overstretched. Why would anyone, let alone a serving soldier, want to be a member of this party?

TGF UKIP

Oh for those blissful days when the Tories could not be challenged as the party that solidly supported the Armed Forces and was unequivocally to be trusted on defence.

Days that belong with those when the Tories were still the party of law and order.

RCE

The way this government is going, there won't be any armed forces left by the end of this parliament.

A strategic shock is just around the corner. Well, it will be a shock to our political class, wilfully ignorant MSM, and Gramscians of the BBC; it won't be a shock to anyone with a basic knowledge of history who has access to foreign news channels and can use the internet.

Occasional Ostrich

@Cynic 4:54pm

I believe it was serving soldiers, after 5½ appalling years, who swung the 1945 election Labour's way.

I S

Vulture - you cretinous, dimwit, tinpot fascist. Try living in Pakistan if you wish to hand over Government to the military.
Also, could we please have a little less sentimental guff about 'heroes'. This constant glorifying of the military is deeply unsettling within a democracy and is peddled by the politicians who have failed to equip our forces and further fuelled by a media that acted as cheerleaders as Blair pushed us into one illegal and one unwinnable war.
Finally, could someone get a proper grip on military spend and could we have a little more highlighting of corruption within procurement and the 'jobs for the boys' for our senior military commanders and the Ministry of Defence senior individuals.

Just Saying

Two mistakes here in comments:

English Radical - soldiers are allowed to join political parties. It is activism which is not tolerated and the party must not breach HM Armed Forces core values.

HiFli - In identifying yourself as a serving member of the Armed Forces you are in breach of military law by making a political comment (albeit implied).

Serving members of the Armed Forces are not allowed to communicate with the press and thus have no voice of their own. According to people like Axstane, the merest whisper from a soldier would be tantamount to a military coup. Useful political instrument it would seem, given the treatment dished out to the Forces to barely a murmur compared to the fuss over Police, Nurses, teachers et al (remind me how many of them have been killed in the line of duty lately). Except this rule for some reason does not seem to apply to Tory MPs in the TA who are allowed to promote government policy by lending their expert weight as serving officers to the government line (such as Mark Lancaster, the MP and TA officer who came out publicly on various media in support of the replacement of regular forces with reserve forces when it was announced that the Regular Army would be reduced by 20%).

dorothy wilson

What a pity then that whilst Labour, by its own admission was losing control of the defence budget, our soldiers were sent to fight wars without the proper equipment.