Europe and our allies benefit and through their safety and stability, we also benefit. Is it so bad to want to help protect our friends and allies?

Indeed, before committing ever larger sums to defence, shouldn’t Britain’s buyers at Farnborough ask a more fundamental question: what exactly are they spending their money defending?

Britain is one of the most geographically secure nations on earth: an island surrounded almost entirely by allies, protected by NATO’s collective defence guarantee and armed with around 225 nuclear warheads carried aboard continuously deployed ballistic missile submarines. It possesses one of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence networks and has not faced a credible threat of invasion since 1940.

Yet Britain’s defence posture bears surprisingly little resemblance to that of a nation principally organised around territorial defence. Rather it’s as if the Empire never ended.

Never has done.