It’s not just our diminished armed forces that leave Britain vulnerable to Putin, it’s a generation raised on the idea that Britain isn’t worth fighting for, says James Price

In his “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell warned against using tired, old metaphors, as they reflected tired, old thinking. But the poor frog in a pan of water, not realising the temperature is rising until it is too late to escape, is such a powerful one that I am going to use it anyway.

In this rendition, the frog is good old Blighty, unaware of the risks to our security that look close to reaching boiling point and with armed forces so diminished as to leave us all but defenceless.

Buoyed by fantasy ideas of an ever more peaceful world, the British state (at the behest of the Treasury) has allowed itself to finance only the threats that it thinks it can afford, rather than the threats it actually faces.

And just as we are waking up to the need to re-arm, and some are realising this means we need to........

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