THIS week we honour our World War 2 heroes. We pay tribute to their extraordinary bravery at the D-Day landings. We will never forget their fight to keep us free.

Yet, as we do so, military chiefs and veterans say they’re seriously concerned about the state of our armed forces today.

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Our British Army is the smallest it’s been since we fought Napoleon.

Our soldiers are going without the equipment they need.

Our service families live in damp, mouldy housing.

Our veterans face hardship with the cost-of-living crisis.

Recruitment targets are missed every year. Morale is at record lows.

Even former Tory Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has admitted that the Conservatives have “hollowed out and underfunded” our armed forces since 2010.

A recent cross-party defence committee report highlighted huge gaps in Britain’s defences, including: “Inadequate domestic air and missile defence capabilities.”

Another exposed the Conservative failures on defence procurement, with the Public Accounts Committee saying the system “broken and repeatedly wasting billions of taxpayers’ money”.

The Tories have failed British forces and British taxpayers over the last 14 years.

The Tories have a blind spot when it comes to Britain’s defences.

UK armed forces cannot afford another five years of the Conservatives.

The British public are rightly worried that the Prime Minister is keener on getting a green card to live in America, than protect the country he leads.

The public are right to question the patriotism of the Tories when they’ve allowed corrupt Russian money to flow freely through London since 2010.

And what sort of British patriotism allows our energy supplies to be owned by foreign governments?

When instead we could create Great British Energy, our own home-grown clean power company to benefit UK jobs and get cheaper bills for good.

What kind of British patriotism is it for the Tory Party to take our great institutions, like the army and the NHS, and run them into the ground?

And it is Tory chaos – five Prime Ministers in seven years, crashing of the economy and weakening the pound – that means Britain is treated too often treated with pity, not respect, by people around the world.

It is time for change.

Time to restore Britain’s strength and reputation.

It is only Labour that has the plan for stability, to make Britain secure at home and strong abroad.

With increasing threats and growing Russian aggression, Labour has announced a new “triple lock” commitment for the UK’s nuclear deterrent, providing protection for both the UK and NATO allies.

Labour’s “triple-lock” means building four new nuclear submarines to support good jobs and growth across the UK.

Sea Deterrent

It means maintaining Britain’s Continuous at Sea Deterrent, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

And it means delivering all future upgrades needed for those submarines to patrol the waters and keep our country safe.

Our defence review will mean Britain develops the modern, well-equipped armed forces that we can be proud of and that we need to deal with future threats.

At this election we have strong ex-Forces candidates standing for the Labour Party.

They’ve served their country in the Army, Navy and Air Force, now they want to serve their country in Labour.

They have decided – like so many others – that only a Labour government will provide Britain with the strong defence and national security it needs.