Reform Donations Scandal and War with Argentina? - Off the Fence

**Konstantin Kisin** (0:00)
Hello, and welcome back to Off the Fence with myself, Konstantin Kisin, Francis Foster, of course, Winston Marshall of The Winston Marshall Show, and last but not least, Tom Slater from SPIKED. Welcome back, lads. Good to have you. Our four stories for today are War with Argentina, potentially. Javier Mele says Argentina will prevail over declining Britain. We've got the reform donation scandal, the Lindsay Clancy case, and of course, Andy Burnham is back, and better than ever, presumably, we will find out. So let's get into our first story. That is, of course, Javier Mele, saber-rattling, saying that he will prevail, or Argentina rather, will prevail over poor declining Britain.
Could we be facing war over the Falklands with Argentina? Well, a few quick things introducing the story. There may be other dimensions going on here. So President Trump, very bitter against the UK's lack of involvement in trying to reopen Australia from us. Apparently, has signaled that he is prepared to reconsider America's neutrality on this. There's some oil considerations which we'll talk about. And of course, we will discuss Britain's military capacity to actually deal with this problem. So first and foremost, Wynne, how do you feel about Argentina, say, berattling over the Falklands?

**Winston Marshall** (1:21)
You're gonna start with me, are you? Brilliant. Well, I'm extremely frigid about this issue. I'm sick to death of this, what is essentially Latin American Palestinianism.
The Falklands are British. We saw it first, right? The first written European sighting is John Davis in 1592 We were the first to set foot there in 1600 No, sorry, I've got that date wrong. In 1690 with John Strong, right? This is British. Now, it's been British longer than the Argentines have been Argentinian.
It was British before Argentina existed. Not only that, there have been several polls where 99.9% of the people of the Falklands want to be British. They are ethnically British. The indigenous people of the Falklands are British. Not only that, we have had considerable blood spilt because of this continued claim by the Argentinians, of course talking about the Falklands war. I was at the Argentina game in the World Cup and I had these Argentines shouting my face about the Las Malvinas and Argentinas nonsense. They're British and it's actually offensive. I have friends who are veterans from that war.
That they're still banging on about this is just, it makes me very angry. And I just want to add that there's a few other things that have come out in this story. Benjamin Netanyahu's son, which I know you got in a spat with him, KK, this week, has come out on the side of the Argentinians trying to provoke us because of the British government's response to Israel throughout the war with Hamas.
But it's completely contradictory from his point of view because it is Palestinian. Firstly, we have the longest claim to the island. Secondly, the people there want to be British. They are British. And thirdly, like Hamas, Argentina keeps starting wars. They can't win. And a lot of people die along the way. So it's not entirely a joke. So anyway, I'm pretty annoyed about this whole thing. And I'd add to it, I'm not confident that our Prime Minister, Burnham, is going to have the balls of Thatcher to stand up to this antagonism.

**Konstantin Kisin** (3:42)
Well, in addition to lacking the balls, I mean, one of the things that I did is I was quite curious because I don't know if you saw, there was a story in, I think, in The Telegraph earlier this week about the fact that the British Army is now canceling live fire drills. And we're not talking about for reserves. This is a prominent front fighting division. They're canceling live fire drills to save money. So the preparedness of the British Armed Forces to do anything about this, irrespective of the political will, is an interesting question. So actually, I looked this up on Venice AI, and it's a mixed picture.
The garrison on the Falkland Islands is much, much stronger than it was 40 years ago at the time of the Falklands War. So at the time, there was only 80 servicemen on the islands. Today, we have somewhere between 1,300 and 1,700, including helicopters, fighter jets, etc.
The problem is the Navy. So the 1982 Task Force had 127 ships. There is now only 63 ships in the entire British Navy. So we are at half of the Task Force now. And so Britain could realistically... Can I just add to that? Yeah, go for it.

**Winston Marshall** (4:59)
Konstantin, just on the 63 ships in the Navy, if you actually look at aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers, it's far fewer. It's only two aircraft carriers. I think there's only six destroyers and there may be eight frigates. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head.