The rationale is that they're a bunch of utter monsters who'd rather spend money on unnecessary war machines than support the most vulnerable in society. You do understand the whole point of nuclear deterrent, right? If it's not working then we could save money by scrapping Trident.

I absolutely know about nuclear deterrent and I also know that we have a gap where Putin may think he can get away with using tactical nukes because we won’t date to use an ICBM in response. And if you think that is far fetched you haven’t understood how the Russian war machines thinks.

Even if you grant all that - which I don't, you're just making up post-hoc excuses to justify needless military spending - it still doesn't answer how the magic money tree could pay for the F-35As if the country is so strapped for cash.