PETER HITCHENS: We would hardly defeat Legoland in a war – and yet our politicians still think they are Churchill

In a real war, this country could not defend itself against an attack from anyone much bigger than Legoland. As my Daily Mail colleague Mark Nicol has pointed out in an excellent report, the Royal Navy is in its most sorry 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 dilapidated and severely overstretched) is likely guarded by American warships.

Our surface fleet, which until recently consisted of a total of about 50 destroyers and frigates, is now a pitiful remnant. It now consists of only 15 ships, and the majority of them are idle and immobile, lying on land, being repaired or simply rusting.

The Navy’s two massive new aircraft carriers, which were obsolete even before they were laid down and have a tendency to suddenly give up the ghost, cannot be adequately protected when they set sail and are essentially big, fat targets. We even have to borrow planes from US President Joe Biden to use on them since we don’t have enough of our own.

We are losing important men and women because recruitment difficulties make life harder and less family-friendly, and experienced people are quitting. The same is true of all armed forces by and large: they are poorly equipped, do not have enough resources for training, and lose good people who cannot be easily replaced.

And yet, in the midst of all this, our politicians – from both major parties – continue to beat the drum of jingoism about Ukraine, as if we were a powerful and wealthy power.

Now Britain is boldly proposing to supply Ukraine with British-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles – after first humbly obtaining permission from the US. Perhaps this rather foolish decision to escalate the war will not lead to a wider conflict in Europe. Perhaps it will. I remain completely baffled as to why Britain is even participating in a proxy war between the US and Russia on Ukrainian soil. I hereby reiterate my invitation to “Boris” Johnson to discuss this issue with me.

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

There was a music hall song 150 years ago that went, “We don’t want to fight, but by God, if we did, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!”

The 2024 version is: “We want to fight, but with all the fuss we have no ships, we have no men and we have no money!”

Idealistic foreign policy only creates new evil

A gripping documentary series on BBC Catch-up, Corridors Of Power, details the US’s repeated attempts to control the world over the past 35 years. Inadvertently, it shows that America’s claims to be saving persecuted people from genocide, particularly in Yugoslavia, are utter nonsense.

Since America failed to prevent the horrific massacres in Rwanda and Darfur, humanitarian aid cannot possibly be the true goal of the United States. It is really about power. That power is often wielded by rather stupid, vain people who have no idea what they are doing but mistakenly think they are being noble.

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

The episode on Libya is particularly telling, with David Cameron as one of the leading idiots. The intervening nations had no idea what their aims were. They were wrong about the dangers they were supposedly protecting the Libyans from. They were egged on by television journalists who were equally ignorant.

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

I didn’t care at all that the people who did it had good intentions.

It has now been 391 days since Lucy Letby was told she would die in prison. But should she even be there?

Where is Dock Green? Cops lost in space

It was a dark fall evening and I had just moved. I hadn’t had time to hang curtains yet and the middle window of my living room was adorned with a neighborhood watch sticker from the previous owners. I was unpacking books when with a crash and a clank a large rock flew through the window, right where the neighborhood watch sticker was. I ran out into the freezing cold street to catch the perpetrators and there they were, three boys around 14 years old.

In a rage, I chased them for a quarter of a mile. I caught up with them. I trapped them in a dead end street where they hid shivering in a hedge. There were no cell phones then, so I flagged down a passing taxi and asked them to radio the police. I heard them do this. I waited. The stone throwers dug deeper into the hedge. And then it dawned on them and on me that no one was coming. They knew I wouldn’t dare touch them, and I knew it too. I had to let them go.

When I later contacted the local police, I was told feebly that they “could not find the road” because the officers were “unfamiliar with the area.” As I know from recent experience, they still have the same problem, claiming for days not to know about a bad incident even though I gave them the exact location and time. Since then, I have been of the opinion that our police force is too big and far from local enough.

Why is that? The man who ruined our criminal justice system, Roy Jenkins, wanted greater government control of the police. The Tories, as usual, went along with it. He began merging the 127 police forces of England and Wales (now there are 43). In Scotland it would be even worse. This was a fad of the time, bigger is better, the same idea that pushed several formerly successful car manufacturers into British Leyland.