THIS is something I never believed I’d write. We need to spend more on defence. Or rather, since spending will increase in the normal inflationary way of things, we need to make sure our capacity to defend ourselves is raised beyond the dangerously low level to which it has been allowed to drop.

With a General Election looming, the main parties likely to lead, if not form, the next Government, Conservative and Labour, have been proceeding on the basis that there are “no votes in defence”- the usual position. But there are signs they might be wrong this time.

So much concern about Britain’s withering defence capability has been expressed by people whose views are impossible to not respect or ignore, from President Obama to former chiefs of our Armed Forces, that the public is beginning to sit up and take note. If what it learns makes it wake up sweating in the night, that would be understandable.

Here are a few facts. Through the scrapping of the Nimrod reconnaissance plane and reductions in our submarine fleet, we are severely handicapped in spotting and tracking intruder submarines in our waters. Since the height of the Cold War, the number of RAF combat squadrons has been reduced from 30 to just seven, with a further one due to go. Over the same period, our fleet of warships has declined from 50 to 18. The Navy has no aircraft carrier and when replacements arrive they may have no planes.

Numbering 176,000 at the time of the Falklands War, the strength of the British Army is now down to just 82,000. With further cuts likely, the head of the US army has warned that in future British troops might have to operate within US divisions rather than on their own.

Of course none of this is news to the Government. Much of it is its doing. And from statements, the Government seems as concerned as the rest of us. Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, for instance, has stressed that Britain “must not let its guard down”. Warning particularly of “a real and present danger” of further Russian attempts to destabilise Baltic states, he declared we must be prepared to repel Russian aggression “whatever form it takes”.

Yet, in common with Cabinet colleagues, including the Prime Minister, he has refused to guarantee that defence spending will remain at the minimum two per cent of GDP required by Nato.

Back in 1998 it was three per cent. The earlier removal of the Berlin wall, and the seeming entente cordiale with Russia, might well have justified a reining back of defence spending. But the world has regressed, the growing menace of terrorism added to the worrying expansionism of Russia, where President Putin has raised defence spending by a massive 35 per cent.

As David Cameron has said, a government’s first duty is to protect its citizens. Back in 1939, when Britain was grossly unprepared for the Nazi threat, at least we had the industry to build the ships and planes needed to defend ourselves. That’s largely gone. We are a sitting duck reliant on a Nato weakened by our own weakness, and a war-weary America itself diminished in power and increasingly irritated by our reluctance to step up to the plate. When the blow comes, who will be blame?