I am Aidan ..., of GL20 ..., one of your constituents. We've interacted a little on antisocial media, but I wanted to put my thoughts out a little more clearly for you, following the disastrous meeting between Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump.
I'm confident that I don't need to do this, as I'm confident that you'll be doing the right thing anyway; but…
We need to support Ukraine, as much as we are able to. With finances, civilian aid, military aid and intelligence, and probably other stuff that you'll be more familiar with than I.
In my opinion, we need to increase our military spending, by more than Mr Starmer recently announced; and we need to encourage our allies to do likewise. We need to move closer to our European allies, and other like-minded allies further afield, such as Canada, Australia, South Korea etc. Consequently, wherever possible, we need to spend that money within the sphere of European military-industrial-complex, rather than the American MIC. Mr Trump has proven that we cannot rely on the US, they are no longer a strong and reliable ally. We need to divest ourselves on our reliance on the US as much as we realistically can. Whether that's major equipment, parts and repairs, leadership, expertise and intelligence – everything that we can provide for ourselves, or from closer allies, we should look to.
I appreciate that there will be some areas where that's impossible (in the short & medium term) or just hard, but hard shouldn't be an obstacle. Where it's short & medium term impossible, then we (as in Europe+) should look at ways of making it possible in the longer term.
I know that this will be too antagonistic to be realistic, but I would be in favour tabling a debate in parliament on withdrawing the invitation for a state visit by Mr Trump – if he cannot act like an ally, he should not be treated as one. I would favour that invitation then being extended to Mr Zelenskyy instead. I know it would be doomed to fail, but the very existence of such a proposal may act as a wake-up call – an expression of discontent. "For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing" and all that.
As a partially separate issue, I also think we need to move closer to the EU, and ditch the red lines imposed by Theresa May; and start paving the way towards rejoining – which will be a long road, as we have proven ourselves to be unreliable as well. But we can do what we can – move towards regulatory alignment, freedom of movement etc. Aside from anything else, we need to show the other nationalist populist parties of Europe (AfD, NR, PvV, FdI etc) that we regret not just the result of the 2016 referendum, but that fact that it happened, dividing the country like never before.
. They have completely lost the respect
