PETER HITCHENS: We’d barely beat Legoland in a battle

In a real war, this country could not defend itself from an attack by anyone much bigger than Legoland. As my Daily Mail colleague Mark Nicol has pointed out in some superb reporting, the Royal Navy is in its most pathetic state since the Dutch fleet sailed up the River Medway in 1667.

None of our six attack submarines are at sea, so our supposedly independent nuclear deterrent (itself decrepit and under great strain) is probably being guarded by American warships. 

Our surface fleet, until recently kept at a total of about 50 destroyers and frigates, is now a pitiful remnant. Down to 15 ships, much of it is silent and immobile, tied up alongside being repaired or just rusting.

HMS Astute, one of the Royal Navy’s six attack submarines, none of which are at sea

The Navy’s two gigantic new aircraft carriers, obsolete before they were laid down, and given to conking out suddenly, cannot be properly protected if they go to sea and are, to all intents and purposes, great fat targets. We even have to borrow aircraft from US President Joe Biden to put on them, as we do not have enough of our own.

We are losing key men and women, as recruitment difficulties make the life harder and less family-friendly, and experienced people quit. The same is broadly true of all the forces, poorly-equipped, short of resources for training, losing good people who cannot easily be replaced.

And yet amidst all this our leaders – of both major parties – constantly beat the jingo drum over Ukraine as if we were a mighty power and a rich one.

Now Britain boldly proposes to supply Ukraine with Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles – after humbly seeking US permission to do so. Maybe this rather silly decision to make the war worse will not create a more general conflict in Europe. Perhaps it will. I remain wholly baffled about why Britain is even taking part in a proxy war between the US and Russia on Ukrainian soil. I here repeat again my invitation to ‘Boris’ Johnson to debate with me on this subject.

But if it does spread the war, we certainly cannot fight it. And where is the money to come from, in a country that cannot afford to keep violent criminals in prison, which claims to be drowning in a fiscal black hole, and which has far more potholes on its roads than it has properly-trained soldiers?

A hundred and fifty years ago there was a music-hall song which ran: ‘We don’t want to fight, but by jingo, if we do, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!’

The 2024 version runs: ‘We do want to fight, but, midst all the ballyhoo, we’ve got no ships, we’ve got no men, we’ve got no money too!’

Idealist foreign policy just creates new evils 

A gripping documentary series on BBC catch-up, Corridors Of Power, describes the USA’s repeated attempts to police the world in the last 35 years. Without meaning to, it shows America’s claim to be saving persecuted people from genocide, especially in Yugoslavia, is so much piffle.

As America failed to stop appalling massacres in Rwanda and Darfur, humanitarian rescue cannot possibly be its real aim. It’s really about power. That power is often exercised by rather stupid, vain people who have no idea what they are doing but mistakenly think they are noble.

US leaders did not know who would  replace that country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, the Vladimir Putin of the age, a stage villain to be denounced and overthrown

The episode about Libya, in which David Cameron features as one of the leading idiots, is especially instructive. The intervening nations were clueless about their aims. They were wrong about the dangers from which they claimed to be protecting Libyans. They were egged on by TV journalists who were just as ignorant.

Above all, they did not know who or what would replace that country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi – the Vladimir Putin of the age – a stage villain to be denounced and overthrown. What they mainly achieved was the great migration by unstoppable millions of economic refugees from the Middle East and Africa into Europe. Gaddafi had prevented that. Now it is permanent and will change all our lives forever.

I couldn’t care less that the people who did it had good intentions.

It’s now 391 days since Lucy Letby was told she would die in jail. But should she be there at all? 

Where’s Dock Green? Cops lost in space 

It was a dark autumn evening and I had just moved house. I hadn’t yet had time to put up curtains and the middle window of my front room was adorned with a Neighbourhood Watch sticker from the previous owners. I was unpacking books when, with a crash and a tinkle, a large stone sailed through the window, just where the Neighbourhood Watch sticker was. I shot out into the freezing street to catch the culprits, and there they were, three boys aged about 14.

Fuelled by fury, I chased them for a quarter of a mile. I caught up with them. I trapped them in a dead end where they hid, trembling, in a hedge. There were no mobile phones back then, so I stopped a passing taxi and asked them to contact the police through their radio. I heard them do so. I waited. The stone-throwers burrowed deeper into the hedge. And then it dawned on them and me that nobody was coming. They knew I wouldn’t dare touch them, and so did I. I had to let them go.

Later, when I contacted the local police, they said feebly that they ‘hadn’t been able to find the road’, as officers were ‘not familiar with the area’. As I know from more recent experience, they still have the same problem, claiming for days to know nothing of a nasty incident even though I’d given them an accurate place and time. I’ve thought ever since that our police forces are too large and nothing like local enough.

Why is this so? The man who wrecked our criminal justice system, Roy Jenkins, wanted tighter government control of the police. The Tories, as usual, went along with this. He began to strongarm the 127 police forces of England and Wales (there are now 43) to merge. In Scotland it would be even worse. This was a fad of the time, that bigger was better, the same idea which squeezed several formerly successful carmakers into British Leyland.