Can Britain defend itself and have a welfare state?

No one can say we weren’t warned. As early as 1971 America was warning that it could reduce its defence commitment to Europe, when the Democratic Senator Mike Mansfield proposed halving the number of US troops stationed on the continent. The Senate defeated that particular resolution, but the sentiment never went away. In 2016, Barack Obama lambasted European countries as ‘free-riders’ complacently sheltering under America’s security umbrella and throughout his first term Donald Trump was crystal clear that other Nato members needed to drastically increase their defence budgets. So when JD Vance put the message in blunter terms at the Munich Security Conference last week, no one should have been surprised. It was one of the longest telegraphed punches in history.