It is almost funny to watch warmongers outbid each other in their eagerness to spend our tax money. Keir Starmer has now pledged to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, just in time to impress Donald Trump. This amounts to an extra £13.4 billion a year, and the foreign aid budget will take a hit to help pay for it—an ill wind, I suppose. But the Fake Conservatives want still more. The excuse? The supposed Russian threat.

This is, of course, nonsense. Russia is not about to invade Britain, or anywhere in Western Europe for that matter. The war in Ukraine has shown the limits of Russian military ambition. The Russians are fighting a defensive war, not mounting a Stalinesque takeover. Yet, as always, our leaders insist on pretending there is a great external menace to justify throwing billions into the pockets of the military-industrial complex. The Americans demand it, and Starmer, desperate for approval, is only too happy to comply.

While reckless waste of our money is nothing new, what is interesting is the wider shift in priorities. For the past decade or so, the political frontmen for our rulers have been obsessed with the “woke” agenda—pushing endless social engineering projects and Green policies that made energy unaffordable and industry unworkable. That phase is coming to an end. The ruling class has realised that a country crippled by economic decline and mass immigration, plus cultural self-hatred is not much use as a power-projection tool. It turns out you need a functioning economy and a cohesive society if you want young white men willing to kill and die in your wars.

Thus, Starmer’s defence splurge is not just about pleasing Trump. It is part of a broader shift towards restoring Britain as a stable, moderately productive base for elite power. Expect a quiet scaling back of Green madness. Expect immigration policies to be quietly tightened to weed out the more obvious criminals and troublemakers. Expect the economy to be restructured—not for our benefit, but to make the country useful again to those who run it.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It is the British equivalent of what is happening in America. Trump’s return marks a Thermidor reaction against the excesses of the past decade. There, as here, the ruling class has decided that its long-term survival requires abandoning the more destructive elements of its own policies. This is not a restoration of national sovereignty, nor is it a return to liberty. It is a tactical retreat to shore up a collapsing system.

So what should we do? For now, we should take what little good comes out of this shift. Some industry is better than none. Some stability is better than chaos. If the ruling class is moderating its more insane policies, that at least gives us breathing space. But we should also remember that any return to sanity is only a means to an end—prolonging their rule. It is up to us to use whatever small openings we get to push for real change. Just as Glasnost and Perestroika were meant to stabilise Soviet power but ultimately led to its collapse, we must ensure that any liberalisation here is the start of something much bigger.