On that surreal note, let me quote Rudyard Kipling:
“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!”
There is plenty of jingo, but the ships, the men and the money are more difficult to find. I genuinely hope that some of the fantasy talk in this debate is widely seen by
the general public. It was a Gilbert and Sullivan performance as Members first conceded that our weaknesses are such that we had to conceal the extent of them in the report—that is what the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said in an intervention.