It was a sad day, seeing a great beast diminished, demolished, taken apart. HMS Ark Royal was being decommissioned on Loch Long before being taken to Turkey to be scrapped and the crew were feeling a little bit taken apart and diminished too. Colette, an 18-year-old able rate from Glenrothes, said it felt like her home was being taken away from her, but it was something that the commanding officer, Dan Ferris, said to me on the bridge that’s stuck with me the most. It was disturbing then, and it feels even more disturbing now.

What he said concerned the Falkland Islands. When the decision was made to scrap the Ark Royal in 2010, by a Conservative Prime Minister no less, there were warnings at the highest level of the Royal Navy that it would leave the islands open to a fresh attack. I brought the subject up with Commander Ferris and asked him whether a foreign leader with his eyes on British territory might consider the scrapping of the Ark Royal a good time to strike. Commander Ferris was deadpan, as commanding officers always are with journalists, but said this: “I would suggest it might be an opportunity.”

How much bigger is the opportunity now? It was revealed this week that the British Army has been told to stop “non-essential” training exercises to save money; Andy Burnham has also been less than clear about his government’s commitment to increase defence spending in line with our commitments to NATO. Among the PM’s critics has been the Labour MP Tan Dhesi who said the need to commit to defence spending at 3% of GDP by 2030 was underlined by the threats to the Falklands from the Argentinian president Javier Milei. “We owe it to the Falklands,” said Mr........

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