A letter to the Times which was published on 21st June 2009.

If we abandon Trident (leading article, June 20th), we shall leave France as the only strategic nuclear power in Europe, and we shall come under irresistible pressure to give up our permanent seat on the UN Security Council while France will continue to retain hers.  A nuclear submarine armed with ballistic missiles is the only weapons system that allows pressure to be brought on an enemy state anywhere in the world.

Coupled with the two planned carriers, an updated Trident system will give the UK the most potent force projection that can be bought for the money – about £20 billion spent over 10 years, or an average of about £5 billion per annum for the capital cost of the equipment.  This should be compared with the £10 billion net per annum we shall soon be spending in direct contributions to the EU, or £3 billion plus per annum on local authority “cultural services”.

Can anyone seriously suggest that we will derive better value as a nation from these other expenditures?

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 12th April 1994.

The dawning realisation of the inescapably federative tendency of the European Union, to which Niall Ferguson refers (article, April 8th), is very welcome.  There is indeed no middle way between Britain’s independence and our extinction as a self-governing nation.

Escape from the European Union nightmare is not only possible but also the only way to secure our future as a happy and prosperous nation.

The fourth quarter of last year saw Britain’s visible exports to the EU fall below 50 per cent of total visibles.  When invisibles are added the EU probably took less than 45 per cent, refuting once again the constant Europhile refrain about the ever-increasing importance of the EU market to Britain.

In any case, free trade in industrial products has long existed between all European countries, whether inside or outside the EU, and will continue when we eventually leave.  Britain’s trade with non-EU Switzerland – per capita the richest country in the world – is as free as it is with Germany.

The North American Free Trade Area is visible proof that free trade arrangements do not need large, EU-type bureaucracies. As important, the failure of the United States to grapple with its huge crime and public education problems, and the EU’s impotence in the face of massive structural unemployment, should discourage anyone from believing that large, multi-ethnic federated states do anything but provide employment for functionaries.

With national self-determination regained, Britain would be free to reallocate the massive resources of taxpayers’ money and civil service effort presently expended on mitigating the worst effects of EU membership.  This effort would be in part transferred to determined support of our trade and culture in the Americas and other parts of the world which have been neglected because of the European fixation.

Accompanying this would be a re-evaluation of the Commonwealth as an asset, not a burden; as a vehicle for practical idealism; and perhaps, by virtue of its containing about a quarter of humanity, as informal guarantee of our UN Security Council seat.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th January 1993.

Your report that Britain is being pressed to give up its permanent seat and veto on the UN Security Council needs a more robust response than your editorial (Jan. 27th).

If the level of current financial contributions were to be the criterion for membership, then both Russia and China would have to give up their seats before Britain did; the former because it has no foreign exchange to pay its $230 million assessment, the latter because it pays less than Spain or the Netherlands.

It would, however, be sensible and prudent for Britain to increase its contribution by the relatively paltry sum of £30 million and to act more conspicuously on behalf of the Commonwealth, to which it owed a great deal at the UN during the Falklands crisis.

At the same time, President Clinton should be reminded that it is not just cash to support a bloated UN bureacracy that matters, but a record of long-term willingness and ability to act physically in support of UN objectives.  In this respect, Britain’s record, from Korea to Bosnia, is second only to that of the United States.  Germany and Japan need to work their passage before making claims.

France and China were not victors in the Second World War as you state: they were the two principal defeated Allied countries, whose liberation was due to the victories of the other three permanent members of the Security Council.  Stalin recognised this and opposed their membership of the Security Council for that very reason.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 4th February 1992.

Charles Moore is right (article, Jan. 31st).  There is something rotten in the State of the Union, and that is the corrosive defeatism which has gripped most of the British political class since Suez.  To this defeatism must be added the automatic denigration of our country by the majority of journalists and other members of the chattering classes who gullibly reproduce any claim about the superiority of continental countries.

Dirk Bogarde’s review of two books on Germany (Weekend, Feb. 1st) is a case in point.  Beside his fantasies about the three-language abilities of ordinary Germans is the matching remark about our “impoverished, rather smug island”.

According to the OECD, the real disposable incomes per head in Britain, Germany (before unification), France and Japan are only trivially different when calculated in purchasing power parities.  Last year a German study revealed that of the best 50 companies in Europe, 27 were British, while the value of the top 500 companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange is greater than those of Frankfurt and Paris combined.  Britain’s net overseas assets (at around £130 billion) are the greatest of any country in the world (including Japan).

Yet these facts about our real strength do not prevent George Jones, for instance, referring to Britain’s “declining economic influence” (Jan. 31st) when discussing pressure brought by the Germans and Japanese on Britain to give up its UN Security Council seat.

The increased pressure for the separation of Scotland from the Union is a predictable consequence of Britain’s insane policy of surrendering her independence to the European Cmmunity – itself a direct consequence of post-Suez defeatism.

To paraphrase Ludendorff’s supposed remark about the British Army, we have become a lion of a country ruled by ninnies, and nobody wants to be part of that when there is an alternative.  Whichever party announced it was reclaiming Britain’s independence and would not ratify the Maastricht surrender would both win the next election and save the Union.