MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Needing French support to defend our shores lays naked this nationwide disaster

What makes a nation? For many countries, it is the possession of an army that ultimately keeps them in being, and in one piece.

The old jibe that a language is a dialect with an army – and that a dialect is a language without an army – has a lot of truth in it.

You can have a pretty flag and a tuneful anthem but if, ultimately, you cannot defend yourself when attacked, you are not a real nation and must live as your stronger neighbours dictate, or vanish altogether.

In sea-girt Britain, this has always been different. For us, it is the Navy which has been our sure shield. 

In the Napoleonic wars, its mastery of the seas was such that Bonaparte, with his huge Grand Army, was powerless to attack us.

Nor did the Germans come in 1940, when Nelson’s heirs made a Nazi invasion impossible. 

Our most fervent patriotic song Rule, Britannia! proclaims that we rule the waves and, as a result, never shall be slaves.

Our greatest naval victory, at Trafalgar, was fought far from our shores, a thousand miles from Land’s End.

Britain can have a pretty flag and a tuneful anthem but questions should be raised if she cannot defend herself when attacked. PIctured: The HMS Mersey (foreground) tracking Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich (far L) and Kilo-class submarine Krasnodar (2nd L-in distance) in UK waters at sea on April 9, 2026

That is why we have a Royal Navy, and all our wisest leaders have kept it strong.

King Charles II is supposed to have proclaimed, ‘It is upon the Navy, under the providence of God, that the safety, honour and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend.’ 

He swiftly found out how true this was when the Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway in 1667, seized Sheerness, sank several of our vessels, captured our flagship and towed it off to Amsterdam.

It may well be the case that this was the last time in our modern history that our Navy was so badly neglected and unfit to fight.

We have now all heard the dreary catalogue of technical failure, bad planning and ill-directed spending of vast resources that has brought us to this state. Experts have known it for years.

It is now much more widely understood. Yet this has not yet solidified into a strong public demand for a restoration of the Navy.