In an exclusive report for the Daily Mirror, assistant political editor Alexander Brown revealed that a group of Labour MPs has accused Reform UK of showing an “amateur and irresponsible approach” to Britain’s defence.
Speaking to defence sources, it is clear the row comes at a time when shipbuilding is increasingly central to UK industrial policy. The Clyde yards in Glasgow are building the Type 26 frigates, while Rosyth builds the Type 31 programme. Both are positioned as export-ready designs, with BAE Systems and Babcock aiming to leverage these projects for international sales. Against that backdrop, any suggestion that political parties are not taking shipbuilding seriously is seen in industry circles as a risk to confidence and long-term planning.
Parliament has repeatedly heard ministers describe shipbuilding as a foundation industry for national security. The Strategic Defence Review, published earlier this year, identified maritime capability as one of the UK’s comparative strengths. Labour MPs now accuse Reform of failing to engage with this strategic narrative, while Reform insists they alone have pressed the government to use British steel in naval construction.
According to the Mirror, a dozen MPs, including several representing coastal constituencies, signed a letter organised by Scottish Labour MP Graeme Downie that condemned Nigel Farage and his party for failing to address shipbuilding in their manifesto.
The MPs argued that Reform’s silence amounted to a “gross betrayal” of national security and British industry.
The letter, cited by the Mirror, pointed out that neither Farage nor his colleagues had spoken during parliamentary debates on the Strategic Defence Review in June or the Westminster Hall session on shipyards and economic growth in March. It stated:
“It is disappointing that someone who says he aspires to becoming Prime Minister of this fantastic country can fail to support the vital work of our shipbuilding industry. To continue to fail to do so would be a gross betrayal of both our national security and one of our most vital industries.”
Downie and his colleagues highlighted the scale of the sector, noting that shipbuilding employs nearly 40,000 people across the UK and generates close to £3 billion in output. The letter also directly challenged Farage’s understanding of Britain’s maritime heritage and the strategic importance of naval shipbuilding to an island nation. The Mirror further reported that MPs including Amanda Martin, Tracey Gilbert, Gregor Poynton and Calvin Bailey co-signed the letter, many of whom sit on the Defence Select Committee or represent constituencies where shipbuilding remains central to the local economy.
Responding to the criticism, Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice told the Mirror:
“Reform were the only party with a plan at the last election to vastly increase defence spending. Nigel and I lead the way on saving British steel after Labour let Port Talbot blast furnaces close and dragged their feet with Scunthorpe. We are the only party with a serious plan to use British steel for shipbuilding in the country.”
Can’t stand farage but this is really desperate stuff by the other oarties. I would imagine there’s lots of things not in their manifesto its not like they expected to win the last election they had only. Just formed. Maybe ask him his policy rather than all this pathetic posturing
Indeed. Pathetic and desperate.
Labour saying fantastic country while pulling the flags down is a little stupid.. Oh I mean british flags not Palestine flags….
His manifesto is promising tens of billions in unaccounted for expenditure (can’t remember the exact figure but something in order of £40b). This is polictics, expect both labour and conservatives to call out omissions, as it’s clear major cuts would have to happen to pay for his tax breaks and expenditure. The manifesto is the promised a party makes and so anything not in it is not their priority. So expect more of this as the election comes closer.
I’m pretty sure much of the uncosted spending has been costed with the cuts to green nonsense saving 20/40 bn a year no interest payments on quantitative easing or something like that the other party’s often say it’s uncosted and then ignore what reform has said
Aren’t the Scottish elections coming up hence party politics.
Main secutiny of manifestos will happen in 3 years time when the general election happens.
once again, it seems. that this government blames all. but ones self.
if it was not for the events with Ukraine and Russia , would it be fair to say, this government would have little interest in the military
like the pervious occupants of downing street. for who was it. that has been hollowing it out ,
we should have been increasing the military. not reducing it.
just my humble humble opinion. feel free…
The traitors are conservative and labour , For decades they have been dismantling the Armed Forces.
Labour MPs know they will be turkeys at Christmas at the next election. Reform came second to labour in 89 seats. Labour will throw lots of mud in the hope that some sticks.
Exactly.
I’m hoping it does stick. I’d rather have a stagnant labour than an inept and politically dangerous reform government.
No Labour is far worse than that. It refuses to fix problems which will destroy this country and they just love banning things.
The purpose of voting Reform is not to vote in the most perfect of governments. The purpose of Reform is blow up and destroy the current political establishment and teach them pain and fear. They are well overdue a lesson in humility and need to understand that when the public ask them repeatedly to control mass immigration and they instead take the track of defending the “holy ECHR” then they should associate that stance with bad things happening to their party and careers.
Spot on !!
I’d love to know just what Labour have banned that has significantly impacted your life.
Voting in Reform will not blow up the political system. You’ll end up with the same shit we had under the Tories, except with an even greater degree of economic ineptitude. The same elites, serving the same 1% of earners and corporations, shitting on the average person whilst disguising their failings with the played-out culture war nonsense.
Yes, Labour needs a lesson. But voting for parties like Reform or that new Corbyn party won’t teach
them that lesson, you’ll just hasten national decay and support a spiral of incompetence.
I’m not sure which Labour Party you’re referring to but the one that is in office now has long given up on the working class and now only represents the Metropolitan Elites. It’s the party of the establishment.
It’s the party of the University staff room, the Media class and International Lawyers.
It is smug and condescending. It has favourites. It lies.
It feels neither love of country or affinity to people outside their narrow, smug social bubbles. Everyone who disagrees with them is labelled a gammon or a Nazi. The public are to be feared and controlled.
It is neither competent or feels the need to be competent if competency requires it to to reform it’s utopian dogmas.
Do you want to respond to what I’ve written in my comment, or keep complaining about the party who I also said ‘needs a lesson’?
Yes, Labour isn’t great in some areas. They have major issues. They’ve had some success as well. Acknowledging that, why would you then go and vote for Reform, a party that has expressed even less interest in actual change, and far more in performance politics?
100% agree with you. The old Club has had its day and needs to go with some fresh ‘sensible’ thoughts for the future. Too soft and do not understand that in a free state the majority rule not the idiots they cater to currently.
Quite agree with you.
Exactly.
The problem is that you are then stuck with the Fromagists for a term of parliament.
He isn’t a team player and most of his politicos are pretty fruity and storm off in a huff pretty quickly.
The problem is what a hamstrung Fromage does other than try and cozy up to The Tangerine Tinted one and his Tangerine Tinted Successor? You can assume destructive anti-EU rhetoric to keep his party together.
Fromage doesn’t have any thought through policies at all as far as I can see. Mind you neither do either of the other parties so no difference there.
Politics has reached dangerous clown level without anyone with leadership skills, policies.
Really you need to be brave and set out a clear manifesto get elected with the manifesto and then say ‘democratic mandate’ and get swinging the legislative axe to all the gumpf which holds this country back and just be prepared to legislate again and again with short bills to disable the blocking challenges. If necessary have a referendum to declare parliament supreme, strike out the super injunction interfering with parliamentary privilege and to put the courts back in their box.
I agree. Any future government is going to need to use Parliament and primary legislation like a jack hammer. Their going to need to legislate a feral judiciary into the ground. Their going to need to be able to fastrack lots of tactical primary legislation. Maybe they wont get to have holidays for a couple of years. Their probably also going to need to introduce career ending disincentives for political Judges who manifestly extend laws way beyond their purpose.
There are probably 3 elements required for successfully reform of the British state.
1. You need reform of the institutions to put parliament back in control of government. That way institutions can be made accountable to the people.
2. You need better politicians. We’re going to need better ways of selecting out the clowns, monsters and careerists. There’s no point of creating the institutional equivalence of a Ferrari if the public is only allowed to select from 2 collections of incontinent monkeys. For example devolving power to a local level is a good idea. But a terrible idea if you give that power to somebody like a Mark Drakeford.
3. The third element is the necessary precondition for elements 1 and 2. This requires the destruction and removal of the current political establishment. The current self selecting bunch of clowns are so out of touch or unmotivated to improve anything that we cannot depend on them to naturally come to the conclusion that maybe they shouldn’t be so appalling at governing. There doesn’t seem to be any understanding that allowing 1 million people into the country in a year is a bad thing. Or that paying Mauritius 35 billion pounds to retain an island we already own in order to allow defence operations for a 3rd party is a bad thing. Or annually giving infinite amounts of money to the NHS whilst services decline is a bad thing. Or allowing shoplifting to go unpunished whilst devoting thousands of Police Officers on moderating naughty tweets is a bad thing. Or more relevant to this website setting an artificial target of 2% of GDP for Defence whilst your navy rusts into non-existence is a sign of you doing a grand job.
We’re not going to achieve elements 1 and 2 before we perform a colonic irrigation of the current political class in Westminster. I don’t really care if a Reform government doesn’t resemble the cast of the West Wing. I’d settle for a bunch of grumpy, argumentative amateurs over self selecting a cabal of plastic careerists who would run a hundred miles rather than attempt to fix an existential problem.
Yea that is what is needed and get common sence back again and stop the WOKE idiots dictating to the majority. It will be a hard and difficult time ahead but it will deliver the results we all need. If it does not happen soon then its time to leave the UK and leave it to fall into the depths of hell its heading towards now. What did so many serve for in the end?
Most of reform is ex conservative members that switched when they lost their seats. They are the polictical establishment. Farage just constantly twists the truth to pretend his a man of the peoples but his clearly not. His the UK version of trump.
They’re not stagnant though are they? They keep making impositions on the country that are both unpopular and destructive to the economy and society in general. ‘Better the devil you know’ loses it’s validity when the devil in question is sufficiently awful.
Really, you want more of the current? Wake up, change is needed or there soon will be no country worth having.
Do you remember Labour before Tony Blair ?
You could take a long holiday to somewhere like…. Istan.
Maybe you could take a holiday across the pond and get some firsthand experience of how a Reform government would act…though I suspect it would only reinforce your opinion.
Seeing as I personally am proud of my flag and my history yes, but no don’t like Donald all that much too cowboy for me.. Happy vacations 🇬🇧🇬🇧
I didn’t suggest that you shouldn’t be proud of the nation or the flag. You should be.
I just think the cognitive disconance needed to be both anti-Trump but pro-Farage is mind-boggling.
Get a grip.
As a Labour Party member (boo hissss) this seems a pretty crappy low thing to come out with.
Everything they say is the letter is true though, it’s not from the government it’s from a backbench MP who’s constituency depends on ship building.
the rag tag bunch of muppets that make up Reform will be a disaster for this country and perhaps the end of the entire western alliance. Can anyone here really put hand on heart and say Nigel Farrage has a scooby what’s he is doing much less the rest of his “party”
All they do is lie and pretend they have simple solutions to all our problems while generally trying to get American TV appearances.
I’m frequently amazed about how many people on here can criticise the Americans over Trump and his MAGA nonsense then in the same breath say Reform is the Answer for the UK.
Reforms only clear policy is NHS privatisation. Farrage has said that’s what he is going to do on dozens of occasions.
Yet the same people voting for him are often of the persuasion that they paid in and Basic state pension and NHS are sacrosanct.
It’s like Turkeys voting for Christmas.
Can you put hand on heart and say that Starmer has a clue what he’s doing?
Jim It’s not about electing the perfect government it’s about blowing up the current failing political establishment. A political establishment which permitted mass immigration without asking the country. An establishment which ignored votes to reduce it and then lied and did the opposite. A political establishment who would rather conduct performative politics than tackle the root cause of the problem. A political establishment who would rather introduce unvetted young foreign men from culturally different countries into our high streets rather than deport them. A political establishment which would rather sacrifice the safety of our women and children in order to protect an out of date dysfunctional international treaty. More broader than that a political establishment which has walked away from the responsibility of governing who have outsourced power to unaccountable quangos or international organisations whilst still sitting in parliament and collecting a salary and pension.
These people need to go and they need to feel pain and learn humility. They need to have a pavlovian lesson about what happens when you ignore the people and how it really, really hurts when you do that. If I had to elect Donald Duck to teach them that lesson I would.
Voting Reform is not about electing the perfect government. How very true: when I look at the strength in depth of the Reform team I am reminded of the words of that great Irish philosopher Terry Wogan, ‘I think therefore I am……confused’.
Just shows that Labour and the Tories private polling must be dismal.
Ludicrous attacks on reform wanting to scrap the online safety act by a party who will be exposed over covering up the grooming gangs and now attacks on defence from the same party that promises an increase in 2027 and aspirations for 3.5 which will be fiddled. The same party that didn’t build a frigate in 14 years.
Labour won’t cut through with these attacks, and the Tories are irrelevant.
Reform need to wheel out a credible military figure and lay down policy ideas.
It seems to me to be a good line – RefUK are after coastal constituencies so let’s have a debate about it !
Farage and Little Richard can’t debate on policies as they don’t have any, being a political marketing setup who are currently changing all their spots to seem less extreme – eg individual risk assessments for trans prisoners in women’s prisons.
And their “Contract with the People” at the 2024 Election had a £100bn+ black hole in it, according to independent analysis.
I have a Reform MP, who when he wanted an asylum hotel to frighten people with, had to point at NHS staff on holiday together because there weren’t any asylum hotels – so I know how poisonous Reform has become.
Let the mud-slinging and projection begin.
Typical uniparty crap just making stuff up.
A story made out of a non story. It’s like Labour to Farage …….’what’s your favourite colour.? ……Farage says ‘Purple’ Now Labour comes out with the tag line….’Farage hates blacks’. It’s the way Labour spin things.
A manifesto means NOTHING, as Starmer has shown this country since the election.
Yawn….
You know you’re entertained really. It’s funny in a very lame way.
All I will say is I think British politicians is going to get all kinds of interesting and I suspect we will see a parliament with no less than 5 parties of significance in the next parliament.. I’m thinking we may very well be heading for a future where no one party gets a good run at a clear majority.
It’s funny because the British public voted no in a referendum on PR voting because they did not want European rainbow politics and all the parties jostling and plotting that comes with it.. but I suspect we are heading for rainbow politics anyway simply because the two main parties simply can longer keep those broad churches together under one roof… interesting times.
I’m really looking forward to the increases in orders from labour this autumn. I’m also looking forward to being the next British astronaut!
If you are backing reform, book you Russian language lessons now.
Any proof of your comment? This angle of attack has failed so far hasn’t it?
A recent example – Reform advisors claiming that ‘Russia is not our enemy”, suggesting we end support for the war in Ukraine and claiming that we could retake former colonies.
I’m sure you can find a 23 yr old with the IQ of a frog in any party👍😀
Mandarin. There are now 30 independent schools in Chinese ownership. They will infiltrate and undermine the establishment by subsidising the fees for the aspiring middle class.
Reform doesn’t believe in spending money on defence as, like Trump, he’s in Putin’s pocket. Trump’s busy wrecking the US military, Farage will do the same here.
Those who have destroyed the Armed Forces have been Conservatives and Labour for 40 years.
and Temu Trump would finish the job.
Any facts to back that up, you always no here but i see few facts from you, I am happy to be corrected. See if you can do it with out being rude or insulting. If I wrong good a wiser person will inform me of that, and from that I will learn more. I await your reply i’ll just get a good book and coffee.
And I just see poor spelling and grammar from you. Maybe educate yourself and then you can use Google yourself, instead of depending upon others to spoon-feed you readily available facts?
Lovely comments, i am severely dyslexic, as i have told you, so as normal you reply is offensive and disgusting, You mock me because of it, shame on you. I am here to pass comment and when possible learn from others. I hope you very proud of your self.
No you haven’t told me, maybe you mean dementia because I’m also dyslexic yet I don’t see any of the typical mistakes due to the condition.
It looks more like you’re playing the disability card.
Hi Spock, It was me he told. Even his Spell checker is Dyslexic too, personally I often hit the wrong key, as do most of us here, it’s no big deal.
I’m looking forward to Labour sacking Ed Millipeed, then drastically reducing industry energy costs so we can make raw products ourselves without outsourcing and importing everything while at the same time shutting down our own industry and sacking the workforce. I always thought a Labour government supported workers, not throw them on the scrap heap. Oh look, I’ve just seen a SAF powered pink pig fly over-head; (American SAF of course).
Getting the national grid infrastructure expanded so that we can take advantage of all the cheap energy from offshore renewables is the best and fastest method of bringing down energy costs. At the moment we have to keep firing-up gas-fired power-stations to cover peak demand, and gas is the most expensive way to generate electricity.
Agreed. We need to keep the LPG for my camper van.
Or stick solar panels on the roof.
But you obviously prefer to pay more money than you need to for your energy needs. 🤷🏻♂️
I have a solar panel to keep the batteries topped up. The LPG costs pennies for weeks of cooking. Horses for coures. 😉
Solar is ace ! Our own House system runs virtually everything, I was so impressed I bought the company !
Motorhome also runs on Solar, no hook-up needed, no campsites either. I even recharge the Motorbike whilst camping.
There’s a lot of ignorance surrounding Solar.
Yeh, solar is good. I have it for the house. Slashes the electricity bill. Wish I’d bought bigger battery. The max discharge rate is a bit of a limit. Can’t put the kettle on and boil an egg while the washing machine is on 🙂
We have seperate systems so that everything can be powered at the same time If required. It’s all about wattage and usage and having adequate power and storage. WM’s and DW’s are big power users so these can overwhelm smaller Inverters when both are on, just like cooking a roast, you just get to know when to use them. We bought a smaller 800w kettle too, it uses half the wattage that our old one did, same with the DW, Toaster and a few other bits. All our lights are rechargable via USB and all my workshop equipment all works off or is recharged by Solar.
It’s great fun too.
Victron Apps are my fav form of entertainment now !!!
Utter nonsense. Offshore wind is ruinously expensive per mgw of actual delivered power. Its intermittency means a back up is essential, further increasing overall generating costs. For now and the next decade or more,until new nuclear capacity comes on stream, that back up will be gas. Yet Miliband has refused to issue new licences to exploit our own resources, making us more dependent on imports.
Offshore wind is the cheapest way to generate electricity. Nor is it intermittent in the locations where wind farms are built, which is why they are built there. Doh! 🤦🏻♂️
Nuclear has a place, but already renewables are at times providing the majority of electricity in the UK. It’s only when they and nuclear can’t meet demand that we switch on the ruinously expensive gas-fired power stations.
How is that much cheaper when we pay £ millions in money to companies to do it> again i wait you fact filled reply. If i remember did Labour say reduce your bills by £300 and when will that be?.
It’s simple really. To generate electricity from natural-gas you have to constantly buy more of it to burn. With wind turbines you buy nothing.
We pay the fossil-fuel industry far more, but their well-paid propagandists only like to refer to the subsidies given to build renewable installations.
Yes Labour did say that. When will they do it? No idea, I’m not a Labour Party supporter.
So what about the massive amount we pay to get the companies to set up wind farms> in green taxes so our Government can bribe them build more, the price has not gone down as promised its gone up. I fully support green energy but feel its a conn as we pay vast £millions in subs to get it. I doubt the cost will go down by £300 years,
The subsidies given to build wind farms are far less than what’s been given to build gas and oil platforms in the North Sea, and way less than those given to the nuclear industry. But again those facts don’t fit your political narrative.
The price has not gone down because if the structure of the energy market. While all electricity is being provided by renewables and nuclear, then it’s cheap.
But as soon as a single gas-fired power station is switched-on, ALL electricity generated in the UK then gets priced to the consumer as if it was generated by gas (even when it wasn’t).
Simple answer is to set up your own Wind/Solar system, It’s very easy and you don’t have to worry about big business or government.
That’s what we did, can’t even imagine why it took us so long.
I have to say the 6kW of panels I put on my roof were a godsend when energy prices went nuts.
Two different inverters – one feeds in and the other offline so I don’t breach the FiT cap. The reality is that in winter it never get to the FiT cap and that in the summer when the panels are going gangbusters we stay below the FiT by charging the car, heating water and running the a/c – happily when the a/c is needed it is generally sunny!
I must admit I haven’t bothered with a battery as it is easier to move the demand [summer wash/drier/dishwasher in the day and charge the car battery. Winter wash/drier/dishwasher after 11pm on o/n tariff. Just requires a tiny bit of thinking.
My main motivation is to cut costs and as a happy output it reduces my CO2 output as well.
That’s a good amount of panel wattage. We have a totaly seperate system that provides off grid power via additional cables and sockets, it was originally to help with the costs when the energy prices “went nuts” as you say ! It morphed when my prepper mindset kicked in, much to my wife’s initial dismay ! (Off grid set ups are proving popular)
But now we have a system that is 100% capable of replacing the mains and our bills have dropped from nearly £4000 per year to just the standing charge for keeping the mains supply.
Using the Solar and Battery allows us to use all our appliances at any time at no additional cost. Cars are all still Petrol although the Cerbera is mostly on trickle charge, the Bikes too but my Electric motorbike (daily runaround) is free to charge.
Grid needs to be expanded yes. Power generation needs to be expensive, unreliable renewables No.
Speed of transition has to be rapid and expensive No. We could keep Gas power longer and transition over to Nuclear and Small Modular Nuclear over a longer period as older infrastructure retires.
Wind and Solar has some input but not when it has such a massive impact on energy bills. It should never form part of the base load but can contribute on the margin. Subsidies should be massively reduced and lets see how they cope. Maybe they can try a little bit harder introducing a mass energy storage solution. Probably better suited contributing to micro-grids though.
I suspect you have hit the nail on the head when you say that we should not aim to rely on wind power for base load. The network becomes increasingly difficult to manage as the number and variability of power sources increases. And as the inertial inductance decreases you create a kind of ‘fly by wire’ network with less intrinsic stability. To extent you can compensate by increasing capacitance – large scale battery storage. But I don’t know how expensive this will be; perhaps enough to dampen the zeal of the renewable advocates. Trashing huge areas of the 3rd world for Lithium and copper probably doesn’t enter into the accounting. I do wonder if lack of inertial resilience wasn’t the problem in the recent Spanish blackout. In fairness I do think wise heads are beginning to realise that wholesale switching to renewables is more of a challenge than the Milliband evangelicals make out. Extreme positions are usually a bad idea in many walks of life. The govt is sensibly giving the go ahead for more nuclear power stations and hopefully small modular reactors. I’m not an expert but I think these are almost as responsive as gas stations and they would deliver some valuable inertia.
Rather than rely on these big companies and Government, why not just install your own system ?
It works for us, no big bills, no price rises, no stressing.
And importing it from across the Channel. Best way is NOT wind but wave etc which is avaibale 24/7 unlike wind and not so impacting on the state and would be a boost to our maritime industries. We need a good mix but the when you have blind folks steering the ship your going to go aground and that I hate to say is the case for the UK today. The future is dark and stormy.
In fairness the Reform manifesto was vague on every issue..
Labours was less than honest but yes it was a lot of empty spaces and vague on about every thing. Apart from on migrants, strangely. Oh well Labour is smashing the gangs so that is that problem solved?
I quite like the tag-line “Smashing the parties that fail to smash the gangs”. There would seem to be more energy directed at that objective and a much better chance of delivering it.
Stop the boats a listen to the people, I find it a disgrace that our flags have been removed from social media ie England Scotland and Wales 🏴🏴🏴🏴but others remained.. 🇦🇪🇸🇾🇯🇴🇵🇭🇩🇲🇧🇷🇲🇼🇸🇰🏴☠️
Do tell where on social media this has happened. I’ve never seen or had 🇬🇧🏴 flags removed from social media. I have seen racist posts and calls for violence against foreigners removed from social media, and shamefully these have often had out national flags attached to them.
Try putting a st George’s flag on YouTube mate, wake up like the rest of us are and as for racist I find being English is just being a bloody native and that is racist.. People in my family died for that bloody flag no offense meant to you but we can all see what’s going on…
Ah yes “wake up”, the phrase parroted by flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate-change deniers, and all manner of unhinged conspiracy delusionists…
And people in my family fought and died for Great Britain fighting racist fascists from Germany, Italy, and Japan. I wonder what they would think seeing that we now have our own home-grown ones…
You need to get out of your social media echo chamber. Your statements “like the rest of us” and “we can all see”, are hilariously inaccurate. You represent a very small, loud-mouthed proportion of the population. The vast majority of the British remain fair-minded decent folk.
No offense taken mate, rule Britannia 🇬🇧
I would not answer you here on ukdj for respect to other people, veggie boy.