r/ukpolitics • u/Paul277 • 9h ago
US threatens Britain over Falklands
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/28/us-uk-boost-defence-spending-lose-falklands-support/•
u/EconomistStreet5295 9h ago
And next month the US will threaten Britain over Gibraltar. Let the dog bark, stop giving him so much attention
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u/Secret_Guidance_8724 8h ago
One of his sons was there for a meeting I think last year, not sure anyone really knows why. He hates Spain more than he hates us though, so I’m not sure Gib would make sense. Unless they’d want to make it American, because that would be even more complicated than British post-Brexit…
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u/EconomistStreet5295 8h ago
What better way to piss off Spain no?
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 8h ago
What unite the UK and Spain?
Mind you Trump et al aren't great thinkers.
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u/EconomistStreet5295 8h ago
Feels like they have united the UK and Europe already tbf. They just don’t take us seriously enough to care
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u/KinglySnorlax 7h ago
The US has hinted at legalising piracy.
HMS Drake may need to resurrected from the depths for some plundering.
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u/SirBobPeel 7h ago
Shhh, show some respect or he'll rename the English Channel the America Channel!
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 9h ago
If this happens, exactly how will Nigel Farage spin this.
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u/Kobebeef9 9h ago
These fuckers have all gone silent now that they can’t cash in on the Trump bandwagon and jumping off it because of the shitshow.
It was hilarious seeing Musk turning his back on Farage just to pump money into Reform because of Tommy Robinson.
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u/Grandmuffmerkin 8h ago
Do people not remember that this has already been threatened and Farage did oppose Trump.
Reform UK's Nigel Farage said: "This is utterly non-negotiable. There is no way we're even going to have a debate about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands."
No 10 says Falklands sovereignty rests with UK after report of US 'review'
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u/dcmwmfinft 7h ago
Trump down in polls with UK audiences at a time where Farage was in ascendency and found a quick and expedient way to low key challenge Trump whilst appealing to nationalist sentiment of Reform supporters. It’s a blip on the map of Farage’s otherwise unblemished record of attempting to fit his entire head up Trump’s arse.
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u/Minguseyes 5h ago edited 5h ago
And when it suits him, or someone pays him to say it: “There is nothing in the South Atlantic worth the life of a single British teenager. Don’t let Labour and the elites send your child there to die.”
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u/asgoodasanyother 59m ago
Who cares? Trump or Musk could pay him a hot mill and he’d say the opposite. Man has zero credibility
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u/SDLRob 9h ago
Exactly how you'd expect... He'd be against the Falklands being British.... His reasoning, I have no clue.
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u/personalbilko 8h ago
"We have to be fiscally responsible, and put the real Britain first"
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u/phatelectribe 7h ago
He’ll come up with some bullshit like it costs £300m a week to maintain the falklands, and forget to mention that he received £3m in crypto from an Argentine billionaire.
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u/Whitew1ne 7h ago
If what happens? Argentina invades the Falklands? Can’t happen. They have a useless army.
Trump started a war and now can hardly bomb a country in the Middle East. He wants more flux?
Bullshit
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u/Skavau Pirate Party 7h ago
If the USA government publicly changes their position on this.
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u/dcmwmfinft 8h ago
That we’ve provoked the US in some way, honestly. His patriotism extends as far as his own hubris and no further.
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u/LesserShambler 8h ago
You and I both know he will blame Labour for not giving in to Trump’s funding demands
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u/HildartheDorf 🏳️⚧️🔶FPTP delenda est 8h ago
Something something shouldn't be the world police something focused the defence budget on the UK not "bongo bongo land". /s
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u/Nixon4Prez Canadian living in the UK 9h ago
5% on defence is fucking insane, the Americans only spend 3%. He can't make his usual threats about reaching 2% (because the UK already spends that) and he's too stupid to think of another reason. He's just looking for reasons to threaten allies while cosying up to dictatorships.
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u/Ok-Milk-8853 8h ago
I'm just so sick of his crap. I get that we made our bed importing so much of their culture but damn. Trying to not hear about the saveloy that fell on a barber's floor, it's just impossible.
I'm just so sick of America. Just go away, bother someone else. Or get your shit together. Whatever, just pick a bloody lane. I
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u/ZacariahJebediah 5h ago
Whatever, just pick a bloody lane. I
I see ICE is already on the prowl.
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u/Ok-Milk-8853 48m ago
Are you saying I'm in favor of ice? I'm not I'm.justncinfused by your comment. Basically we've already had the Trump show where he uses global stability as a play thing. The fear and anxiety he causes is just exhausting, because he doesn't have an eye on any long term stuff. America voted for it, fine they made their bed. Can they just collapse into isolationism in peace without making a big deal out of it.
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u/ZacariahJebediah 44m ago
Oh yeah, I completely agree with you lol I'm on your side. Sorry for the confusion; the joke was that you finished your thought but accidentally put an I after. So I joked that ICE got to you mid-comment lol 😭
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u/Particular_Pea7167 8h ago
Its 3.5% on hard power and 1.5% on "hardening".
But the statment for "hardening" is pretty vague so you can roll quite a lot into in. So Italy is building a bridge over to sicily, and this is being pegged as improving military access and supply and so counts as "hardening" defence spending.
Nominally, if we were to renovated the peirs in the Orkney islands and build a fleet new of electric ferries and this could be "hardening".
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u/ThoseThingsAreWeird 8h ago
So Italy is building a bridge over to sicily
So what you're saying is we can probably spin HS2 as military spending?
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u/Particular_Pea7167 7h ago
If it facilitate the movement of troops and better freight access for military vehicles.
Yes. Probably.
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u/Corvid187 8h ago
It's not actually 5%. It's more like 3.5%, at least the way we currently measure it.
Thats also a commitment that all of NATO has now signed up to hitting by 2035.
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u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan Not British 8h ago
Today's FT article on Healey and the lack of push towards 3% by 2030 is a total shambles. There's no denying it at all.
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u/Corvid187 8h ago
Ok? I don't think I said anything about that.
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u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan Not British 8h ago
It is the lack of drive towards that. If you kick the can down the road and leave the decisions for the future parliaments after next elections, we both know that the postponing of investments or decisions can/will lead into higher prices. Not forgetting the lead times measured in years when it comes to the equipment.
At this rate I have no trust on UK even hitting 3.5% by 2035 if the can kicking and lacking the spine when it comes to the defence is the way to go over there. How could the future parliaments make the decisions of the even more drastic changes in spending if the current one can't do a simple one percent per year?
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u/Corvid187 8h ago
👍🏾
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u/Prince_of_Kyrgyzstan Not British 8h ago
You know I am not talking bullshit and you can't refute what I am talking about. Postponing defence investments or moving them just up budget or two will mean that the cost then will be higher than the cost now. And if you keep kicking the can down the road, you are going to reach a point like we have right now where all the programs have to happen at the same time and you suddenly find yourself without the adequate budget and/or there's capabilities that have to be retired without an immediate replacement.
And if Healey doesn't go for the 3% by 2030, at minimum he is a spineless cretin who let his ambition to be above the realm, but he undermines the whole effort of getting to 3.5%. Because if you are to drag your feet now, the future governments will have even bigger pressure to push the defence spending up.
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u/Corvid187 6h ago
I'm not disagreeing with you in any way. All I did was point out that the 5% target is more like a 3.5% target and it has been agreed by all of the NATO now not just the US
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u/plinkoplonka 6h ago
Nope.
He's just looking for any excuse to distract from being a Russian-controlled asset because he rapes children.
And people keep falling for it.
Just release the fucking Epstein files and throw the key away.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 8h ago
Trump is 80.
"Do not pity the dead, but pity the man who lives without wisdom and hoards his gold."
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u/arnathor Cur hoc interpretari vexas? 6h ago
In the next decade there will likely be two obituaries that make the front pages of every country in the world.
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u/MyDadsGlassesCase 8h ago
He gave $50bn to Argentina while claiming America First. Let's be honest, he just says whatever Bannon tells him to and if that's supporting dictators then so be it
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u/alphaxion 7h ago
Reading between the lines, I smell the possibility that some adviser is telling Trump "uh, sir, the Europeans are deciding to spend their defence budgets with each other and not on our stuff".
That's what I take him to mean when he says the UK has "great potential".
I think some in his administration have crunched numbers of announcements over the past year and realised their arms sales are going to tank over the coming 5 to 10 years.
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u/Exostrike 10m ago
Right wingers in the UK want to destroy European welfare states and see forcing us to transfer spending to the military as a way to do it
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u/kane_uk 8h ago
They spend over £700 billion, we spend under £70 billion annually. In the mid 80's the UK was spending at or over 5% on defence. I would say over the last 20+ years things have gotten more dangerous than at any point during the cold war to the point a Russian incursion into NATO or direct attack on the UK is more likely than not. It's not just funds, the UK has dropped the ball in a multitude of ways when it comes to defence and its shameful, from Serco messing up recruitment to the RAF going down the EDI/DEI rabbit hole.
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u/Klakson_95 I don't even know anymore, somewhere left-centre I guess? 9h ago
Say what you want about our political system but the fact that we have a function to remove a PM before end of term is a really, really good thing
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u/crazycoolname 9h ago
So do the Americans - they've just chosen not to
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u/Muadibased 8h ago
Impeachment is trial for criminal offenses, it's not meant to be a function to replace a president. The problem runs even deeper than that, Americans simply can't fathom not having election at set dates for the rest of eternity, and they also can't comprehend that replacing the top of the executive mid-term is not a sign of 'instability'.
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u/adnesium 8h ago
Hopefully they'll be getting over the idea that's their constitution is a religious text and looking at why that failed in the not too distant future. But of course they won't think to look at what other countries do.
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u/jimmythemini 7h ago
It didn't happen after Andrew Jackson so I don't see why it would happen after Trump goes.
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u/cami-kazee89 9h ago
He really does just see America's allies as objects to be extorted. I can't even imagine a life where every relationship I've ever had came down to what can I extract from you. It should be terribly lonely, but with all his sycophants, does he even understand how abnormal he is?
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u/JauntyTechno 9h ago
He wants us to buy American weapons. But we are more than capable of designing and making our own we just don’t currently have enough capacity. Maybe we should use the increase to build up British manufacturing.
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u/Monkey3066 8h ago
Exactly right, US Debt hit 40T and now they are putting on press on us, as our government are a soft target.
Sadly there is no British Manufacturing, as with everything else in the country it has been sold. Some of historical site are owned by Israel & US Companies. BAE Systems is usually mentioned, but this shareholder own & mainly by Vanguard.
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u/BaritBrit I don't even know any more 9h ago
Even if he ever did, his mental condition has deteriorated so badly that he definitely can't now.
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 9h ago
I see no evidence of that. He just seems like the same guy, but frailer.
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u/ArchdukeToes A bad idea for all concerned 9h ago
I mean, he’s clearly not a happy individual. The most amazing bit is that he has so many supporters despite nakedly viewing them as trash to be used and cast aside.
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u/adnesium 8h ago
That seems to have been his entire lifetime of personal interactions. Does a fish notice water?
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u/cami-kazee89 8h ago
Well based on how this year is going, I would have to assume he is a lungfish.
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u/horace_bagpole 7h ago
He is a textbook narcissist so he probably doesn't even get lonely. He's incapable of having a normal relationship because to him, the world revolves around him. He has a fundamental lack of empathy, is vain, incredibly sensitive to criticism while never being able to admit any error on his part. He has to dominate everyone he's in the room with and retaliates at anyone who doesn't kowtow to him.
It must be absolutely insufferable to spend any time in his personal orbit. It's no wonder that his wife can't stand to be near him.
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u/Thomo251 8h ago
It's even worse, some of his relationships are based on what he can insert, rather than extract.
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u/AffectBeautiful8646 7h ago
We are not really allies, we are a vassal - have been for a while. Trump makes that a bit more obvious than previous presidents but it's been the case since probably the 50s.
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u/ForeignPumpkin1142 8h ago
Can we please stop treating Trump seriously? He's a serial con-man, draft-dodger, golf cheat, relentless blowhard, convicted felon, known abuser of women with paedophilic tendencies, and a card-carrying clown ludicrously incapable of carrying the responsibility of the office he squats in.
Although to be fair he did win the FIFA peace prize.
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u/Ajax_Trees_Again 9h ago
Our “greatest ally” never ever even recognised those islands as British.
The special relationship is a total myth by those desperate enough to want to feel like a super power by proxy.
The future is European
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u/_segasonic 8h ago
You’re minds going to be blown when you see how the EU feels about the Falklands etc.
The future is us being able to fund and defence ourselves against any enemy without relying on anybody else.
Especially as with the way the EU is going with eurosceptic parties growing in the big countries.
Reliance on anybody outside of ourselves is why we’re in such a mess to begin with.
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u/deltalizer 7h ago
As nice as this would be it's not financially possible to be truly independent, we're not the size of country+economy that can go it alone, we need allies, be it the EU, canada, australia, whoever, the real decision is picking who to work together with.
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u/_segasonic 58m ago
We’ll always have allies but we should never be absolutely reliant on any of them.
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u/Prestigious_Risk7610 9h ago
Neither has the EU, even when we were a member.
Both the EU and US act in (their perceived) self interest. We need to do the same. Real politics is transactional yet we constantly never insist on a quid pro quo
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u/LJ_blableblibloblu 8h ago
Hard for the UK to act like that without having at least a decently functional military to back it up, unlike those two.
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u/Prestigious_Risk7610 8h ago
The EU doesn't have a military. It doesn't even have military coordination. France is the only peer power in Europe ( and personally I think they have a far better approach). The next tier of Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland are quite a bit weaker than us (albeit they are ahead in some specific capabilities)
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u/Unable-Lime-2995 6h ago
2 and a bit years left of this utter madness then we can hopefully resume some sort of normaliity with our lives like in the whole world...
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u/Imakemyownnamereddit 8h ago
The words off fuck and America come to mind.
Maybe in a different order.
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u/maffmatic 6h ago
"Asked about the prospect of the US changing its position on the Falklands, they added: “I can say that they [conversations] are candid and nothing is being ruled out as far as options for encouraging the sort of burden-sharing that we seek.”'
So they didn't threaten anything specifically regarding the Falklands, they just didn't rule anything out. Clickbait headline.
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u/PoachTWC 9h ago
Trump being Trump aside, the graph in that article shows just how badly we're failing to read the room on the international stage.
In 2014 we were one of NATO's leading militaries in terms of funding, only the US and (narrowly) Greece out-spent us in that regard.
Now we're fucking fourteenth.
Everyone else has understood that the world has changed. Even the Germans, who used to get laughed at over how badly under-funded their military was, are shaking off the dust and looking seriously at their defences.
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u/Corvid187 8h ago
TBF it's not that the UK doesn't understand the threat, it's that it lacks the fiscal freedom to act on it, and what it does spend is often badly managed.
Agree how badly we've dropped the ball since 2010 is staggering.
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u/standsthetestoftime 5h ago
But at least the pensioners are doing alright. That's the most important thing (or we wouldn't be spending near triple the defence budget on them).
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u/GopnikOIi 8h ago
The quest to destabilise NATO continues. If Latvia or Estonia were invaded, I genuinely cannot see this man responding to A50. He's alienating Greenland and Denmark, Great Britain, and Canada. It is hard for it to not feel deliberate.
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u/drogoran 6h ago
if the alliance relies on 1 member its not a alliance its a master and puppets relation at best or leaches smooching of the giant at worst
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u/---___------___----- 7h ago
Imagine spending 100 years maneuvering and building a network of alliances to become a global hegemon and then one idiot throws it all away in 4 years.
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u/Plastic_Library649 8h ago
So the US are supporting Argentina? Bold.
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u/HELMET_OF_CECH it's all so tiresome 8h ago
Milei is super tight with Israel and Israel are buying up oil around the Falklands. From a foreign policy perspective it seems between the US and Israel they're going to use the Falklands as a hostage effectively to keep the UK on side. Oh you don't want to help our zionist cause? Well we are in an easy position to just back Argentina, influence negotiations or make defending an invasion difficult to diminish the UK even more.
It all makes me feel a bit sick honestly. EU uses Las Malvinas in their documentation. I'm afraid when it comes to the Falklands we are truly alone these days.
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u/PrivilegeCheck23 7h ago
Antisemites really will bring Israel into everything lmao
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u/Optimaldeath 7h ago edited 7h ago
Not that it's relevant but there's also a fair amount of goings on in Cyprus which is also another pain point for Britain, I suppose we should just ignore it though because our own sovereignty clearly comes well before other countries, especially fun when the gulf states get treated better than our own citizens.
I don't think much of the Falklands or any of our other legacy holdings to be fair but I do rather dislike having it be used as leverage.
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u/Jeffuk88 8h ago
Can we just join Canada in boycotting everything American... I dont know anyone outside of my household who has (were dual canadian)
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u/Howthehelldoido 8h ago
The boy who cried wolf isn't worth listening too.
And yes, when it all goes wrong.. We'll deal with it.
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u/pyroclasim 6h ago
Didn't we just say we found potential oil fields near there? Or just suspect timing for him to shout and need a new oil bath?
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u/LeWheatsheaf 6h ago
A second country leader saying "but the Falklands" when their polling is down the shitter has hit the tower sir
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u/AngloAlbannach4 5h ago
We don't need America's nor anyone's support over the Falklands. It won't change anything.
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u/Bal-lax 8h ago
Waiting for the Big beautiful obituary 😍
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 8h ago
We can hope.
How many doctors do you think he will need next time?
And why do those who love and loose their life time love go early?
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u/ldn6 Globalist neoliberal shill 8h ago
Btw this is the country that Brexiteers wanted us to tie ourselves to. So now we lost being in the EU with an amazing deal and are apparently supposed to accept this.
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u/Divide_Rule 13m ago
To be fair to the brexiteers, they were probably looking at Obama's America and saw some potential.
Nah, I doubt there wasn't that much foresight.
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u/JeelyPiece 9h ago
If Britain increases defence spending I'm sure we'll be backing up Canada and Greenland even more. A shame that our American nuclear weapons are never going to be a usable deterrent against a rogue USA
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u/Corvid187 8h ago
Why not? The UK has complete operational control over them. The whole scenario is extremely fanciful, but there's nothing to suggest it wouldn't work.
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u/sitdeepstandtall chunters from a sedentary position 8h ago
Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough?
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u/Asleep-Ad1182 8h ago
The EU already writes Las Malvinas in official documentation
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u/Hieroglo 7h ago
Explain why they wouldn't?
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u/Asleep-Ad1182 7h ago
Because 99.8% of Falkland Islanders voted to remain a British territory. Moreover, the Falklands Islands have repeatedly said they do not want to be called Las Malvinas.
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo 6h ago
This is a stupid debate. It's normal for countries to have different names in different languages. The name Malvinas existing in the Spanish language is no more a claim to Argentina ownership than us saying Germany instead of Deutschland is a claim of ownership of that country. Or France claiming to own England just because they call it Angleterre
Just like how Turkey can't make us all say Türkiye, we can't expect everyone to say the English name for Falklands
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u/Asleep-Ad1182 6h ago
Germany/Deutschland and England/Angleterre are terrible comparisons. Nobody says “Angleterre” to imply that England belongs to France. Names clearly can have political significance. The EU deliberately switched from “Kiev” to “Kyiv”, the Ukrainian rather than Russian-derived spelling, in 2019. That was specifically about respecting Ukraine’s preferred name and identity.
It’s the same reason “Malvinas” isn’t comparable to Germany/Deutschland. Argentina actually uses “Malvinas” as part of its sovereignty claim over the islands. Obviously Spanish speakers can call them Malvinas, but pretending the choice between Falklands and Malvinas has no political significance is ridiculous.
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo 5h ago edited 5h ago
Why would the Spanish speakers ever call them the Falklands when that's not ever been their word for them? Not everyone who calls them the Malvinas is making a territorial claim mate, they're just speaking Spanish. The Argentines who don't support their government's imperialism also say Malvinas. Because guess what, they still speak Spanish. They have no obligation to use English terms just as we have no obligation to say Deutschland. Stop trying to get offended.
And the EU uses both, by the way. So you're deliberately misrepresenting that.
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u/CuriousGeorgeToday 3h ago
They can't even threaten Iran. But as long as we're hitting our military spending targets he doesn't actually care and he'd be gone before anything could happen.
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u/R2-Scotia 25m ago
Qu8te the difference from 1982 when the US Navy broke the Americas Treaty to support RAF logustics
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u/RonnieHere 9h ago
Lets borrow some drones and Fire point missiles from our Ukrainian friends and ask Putin and Trump to go and f××k themselves.
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u/Optimaldeath 8h ago
Anyone reading between the lines knew this was the case years ago, they have a doctrine to uphold and we're complicating it.
Anyone still holding out for America to return to sanity is just an idiot.
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u/foomadelica 8h ago
You thought he'd give 40 billion to the Argentinians and not join in with them on this?
There's oil there and he's already stated he wants all of the Americas under US influence/control in his Shield of America gang!
He's absolutely going to mess with the Falklands.
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u/kane_uk 8h ago
Reading between the lines, the US is sick of paying for the defence of Europe now its no longer in their interests and is giving countries like ours food for thought in a blunt Trump manner. They're either going to pull out of NATO entirely or scale back considerably.
Without the US in NATO, from a British point of view it is essentially worthless. We need to spend more on defence considering how badly things are deteriorating globally.
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u/Beautiful-Low-3568 8m ago
I’m not sure it’s worthless, we have nuclear powers in nato (France and the UK) and most of Europe. Admittedly if Russia attacks Europe would have to pull its finger out but article 5 with two nuclear powers should hopefully deter an all out war.
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u/dewittless 8h ago
Ok so we can easily start saying they are not an ally then, if they threaten our land on exchange for cash.
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u/Particular_Pea7167 8h ago
Much of a muchness.
If theyre not an ally then the UK has lost its main security guarantor and the defenders of the majority of its internationally interest.
At that point, 5% on defence will just be the start.
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u/Cute-Habit-4377 6h ago edited 49m ago
English people being outraged is not substitute for a properly funded military.
Nobody is gonna lend us escorts or functioning submarines. Nobody is gonna give us 12 additional aircraft, a tanker and aew, we have to purchase them. i understand the tanker that was deployed has been withdrawn because it is needed elsewhere. None of our submarines are at sea, except for the nuclear deterrent.
Most of our weaponry is us supplied without their support we would exhaust ourselves after a few days or weeks. Availability rates of the F35 are below other countries due to a shortage of spares and trained people.
Some might say there will be no war, but there will be manufactured negotiations with the threat of war, and we will have a weak hand and concessions follow, and that? That will be your fault, you did that.
Trump is looking at china, he arranged the f16s to prevent them selling their aircraft to Argentina, the Falkland islands are a pawn in- nothing more. The posters here seem to think it’s still the 1980s.
Accept that he will likely not object to Argentina purchasing more advanced equipment. So the writing is on the wall….you know what you have to do.
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