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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

No cuts! No war!

by New Worker correspondent

CND has condemned Israel’s brutal escalation in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians. The targeting of residential areas and infrastructure are war crimes. This is a breach of the ceasefire agreement between the USA and Iran, mediated by Pakistan, which covered all the arenas of the conflict including Lebanon. That truce has now been confirmed following pressure on the Americans from their own NATO allies and the feudal Arab oil sheikhs who have so much to lose if the fighting resumes – although for how long depends on the outcome of the next round of peace talks in Pakistan.

Trump and Netanyahu’s war has been a brutal and illegal onslaught on the people of Iran and Lebanon. It has created a humanitarian disaster and caused the destruction of infrastructure, environmental damage and economic crisis. The imperialist sanctions on Iran must be lifted, and reparations paid for the terrible damage done to the Islamic Republic.

Trump’s threat to destroy a civilisation, with its implied threat of nuclear war, sent a chill around the world. Iran negotiated in good faith over its nuclear programme. Israel and the USA sabotaged these diplomatic efforts.

CND says: “We regard Trump as a dangerous war criminal and have no illusions that this ceasefire will hold. We are committed to opposing any further attacks, and those of Netanyahu’s Israel on Lebanon and on the Palestinian people.

“Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been complicit in this illegal war, and we demand he stops allowing US planes to use British bases. The so called ‘special relationship’ is finished, and the British government must break with Trump and his warmongering policies, including allowing the stationing of US nuclear weapons at the Lakenheath base in Suffolk.”

Meanwhile, a former British head of NATO and co-author of the 2025 Strategic Defence Review has called on Keir Starmer to cut welfare spending further to fund Britain’s war drive.

George Robertston, Labour’s Defence Secretary during the Blair era before serving as NATO General Secretary from 1999–2003, says that successive British leaders had shown “corrosive complacency” to military spending. Echoing Tory demands to slash welfare to pay for a new arms race, Robertson told the media that “we cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget”.

Robertson’s intervention comes as the Starmer government’s existing military spending plans face a £28 billion spending gap. That’s before the ambitions outlined in last year’s defence review are considered. Between 20– 25 per cent of the Ministry of Defence’s budget goes on nuclear weapons spending.

Starmer has rightly come under pressure not to enforce further austerity measures to fund war spending. A recent study published by Oxford University found welfare cuts implemented by the former Conservative-Liberal Dem coalition government left an “austerity generation” with a fifth of children growing up “scarred by poverty” because of its policies.

That warning comes as the full economic impact of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on Iran is yet to be felt. The UN has warned that the global impact of the crisis could see 32 million people forced into poverty globally amid rising food and energy costs.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said: “Whilst Robertson is trying to present this as about defending national security, it is precisely the government’s warmongering and military escalation that is threatening our security now. Making further cuts to public services – at a time when we are facing even greater attacks on living standards due to the US illegal war on Iran – would be disastrous. It will create even greater levels of social deprivation and insecurity in Britain. Starmer needs to cut ties with the Trump administration, close down US access to British bases, and promote a policy of peace and dialogue that respects international law – not buckling to pressure for further military escalation.”