Maybe the UK can partner with other European countries to build missiles for nukes, and in return those countries could get protection under the nuclear umbrella. Although I guess that would be a big commitment, promising to launch a nuclear attack on behalf of another country in certain circumstances

Fair points. But defence might be a sensible thing to spend money on, in a world where stronger powers (Russia, US, Israel) are deciding to attack weaker powers (Ukraine, Iran, Palestine) just because they feel like it

I guess the UK should build up independent capabilities first, before pulling away from the US. Also maybe the UK should seek greater ties with the EU, which together can become independent from the US. The costs of strategic independence could then be shared across the EU.

Nice, my sense of Britishness remains intact

Brit here:

I’m British born and bred and I got 88%. Some of those questions are interesting and definitely better questions than asking the height of the London Eye.

Maybe the UK citizenship test should try to select people who support important British principles (rule of law, democracy, religious freedom, legal equality of men and women, etc). But I suppose somebody could pretend to support those things for the purposes of passing a test, and after the test they might decide they don’t believe in democracy after all. Also I’m sure there are born and bred Brits who don’t believe in democracy.

Well it’s just a suggestion I’m thinking of, and I’m happy for anybody to prove me wrong. But yes I guess the reality is that no European country alone (such as the UK) can fully stand up to the US, because no European country alone comes anywhere close to the US in terms of military power or economic power. Europe together can stand up to the US though.

True. And the UK has its own nukes but unfortunately relies on American missiles to deliver them.

Yes it would be good if the umbrella was enlarged, and also European countries could contribute funds and engineers for this potentially Europe-wide nuclear programme

Why would somebody trust AI with access to their production servers, and why would that person also not have remote database backups

This is yet another reason why Europe needs to develop its own independent nukes without any US involvement

Gammons won’t like this

I think that the UK should try to act in accordance with international law, which it seems Sir Keir is trying to do.

The reality is that the UK is not the most powerful nation in the world. If we decide to disregard international law, then it encourages the big powers (US, China, Russia) to disregard international law in their dealings with us. Do we want those powers to treat the UK in illegal ways?

I looked at that article and it quotes Trump as saying:

We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain

Surely this is a reason why Europe should unite in order to protect its interests. Imagine if the EU were to deny the Americans permission to use any EU air base for strikes on Iran. Would Trump then say “we’re going to cut off all trade with the EU”? It would be much more costly for the US economy if they were to cut off trade with the entire EU, rather than just one EU country.

Yes the same issue has brought about Conservative governments. In 2015 the Tories got only 36.8% of the vote but this gave them 50.8% of the seats.

I’d like score/rank voting based mixed member

I will admit that I don’t know the details of the different kinds of proportional voting. As long as a system would result in a House of Commons that more accurately and proportionately reflects voters, I think that would be a good thing

I don’t want the UK to murder people, or create a new empire. I think keeping British nukes makes sense though. If the UK and France both gave up their nukes then I think Russia would probably increase their invasion of Europe. In the future China and the US might try to take parts of Europe too.

I don’t necessarily think the UK should give up its nukes, they’re an unfortunate necessity in the world we live in

They might well be. Also yes, I think the US treats the UK as a bit of a lapdog. I think the UK should do more to partner with European allies. Europe together has more bargaining power than the UK alone. Europe together has more leverage than the UK to say to the US “actually we’re not doing what you want us to do”.

I think the Greens are right to oppose very wealthy people who just want to accumulate more wealth and power at the expense of everybody else. But I don’t think I agree with them if they want to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”.

Sure it would be good to reduce reliance on the US, e.g. by replacing Trident missiles with British missiles for delivering nukes. But that web page from the Greens I linked to talks about intending to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons”. I think the UK should keep its nuclear weapons for now, while exploring a future possibility of non-American missiles to deliver them.

Personally I don’t think this political polarisation is a good thing

The Greens apparently want to “immediately begin the process of dismantling our nuclear weapons, cancelling the Trident programme” which I think is the wrong move when Russia poses such a big threat to Europe. China and the US could pose threats in the future. Nukes deter those big powers from invading the UK. We could also work with our allies in Europe to try and create a nuclear deterrent which covers all of Europe.

Then on the other side you have Reform who want to blame brown people for everything, and I think that’s also a wrong move.

it would be a project taking years if not decades to disentangle from our US military and intelligence alliances, and we’d be exposed the entire time

Perhaps true, so I guess we shouldn’t try to cut our ties with the US straight away. Instead we can work with European allies to build up Europe’s defences. Then if the US continues to diverge from Europe, Europe will have its own defences in place.

If you join a club for your own interests, and the members of the club (including yourself) agree to appoint leadership for the club, which is renewed by elections every few years, I don’t think that means you become a vassal of the leadership of the club.

For example let’s say you’re in a band. The members of the band agree to have a manager, to handle certain tasks. That doesn’t mean the band members are vassals of the manager. The band members can replace the manager if they think the manager is doing a bad job.