YESTERDAY’S rise in defence spending has only confirmed a man’s gloomy forebodings about geopolitics for the next two to three decades.
Tom Booker, aged 38, cannot help but look at Putin’s expansionism, Trump’s authoritarian lunacy, resurgent European xenophobia and the collapse of the Western order without wishing it was some other bastard’s problem.
He said: “War, right? Or lots of wars? And not faraway ones, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that we can quit whenever we like no harm done. Handy wars.
“I recognise we’ve had a pretty easy 80 years of it but I was around for less than half that, which I feel should really earn me a pass from all the bad stuff like conscription and rationing and having my house bombed and the like.
“Starmer’s got that kind of face on already. Serious and resolute, meaning ordinary people like me are in the shit. We’ll soon be looking back at the frivolity of a Johnson or a Truss as happy days when we could grant ourselves the luxury of a twat.
“I’m thinking what, war in Ukraine, the US lands troops in Greenland, China invades Taiwan and Russia annexes Hungary? To start with? While I’m trying to watch Tipping Point?
“Luckily I won’t get called up myself, as I’m a senior community and content manager for a leading smoothie manufacturer and my business needs me.”
