Our best defence is to stand apart and save Europe by our example

Watching the Queen’s birthday parade, I was struck by the extraordinary precision of the Coldstream Guards, my old regiment. This was commitment, discipline and a determination to achieve the highest possible standards, as befits a regiment that is 366 years old. For British soldiers, such tradition is not an exercise in sloppy-minded nostalgia. It is the essential force that binds them together, in peace and war. No other army in the world can claim such long and distinguished ancestry as ours.

This is as far as it is possible to get from the proposed European Union defence force. The combat effectiveness of our Armed Forces has already been much damaged by European legislation that seems to regard soldiers merely as civilians in uniform. I believe that, in a time of great insecurity in Europe, it would be madness to become involved in what will only ever be a hollow force.

Nato remains the most important alliance in terms of maintaining Britain’s national security. To suggest, as the Prime Minister does, that we are stronger in the EU fails to acknowledge the great security costs of remaining.

First, when UK defence resources have been so radically reduced, it makes no sense to disperse them even more thinly than we are doing at present. At a time when Nato budgets are flat-lining, Russia increased its defence spending from $30 billion in 2000 to nearly $100 billion today. Russia has also undergone a process of military reform, transforming its forces into powerful brigades capable of waging asymmetric warfare of the sort that we witnessed in the Crimea and Ukraine.

We should therefore urgently concentrate on enhancing Nato to match the new Russian threat, instead of pursuing an alternative EU foreign policy and security initiative.

Second, the security threat against the West is now both complex and global, involving cyber war, cyber terrorism and cybercrime, as well as the more traditional forms of conflict. Our responses therefore need to be at the same strategic level, based on the worldwide gathering and exploitation of intelligence. It would be impossible for the UK to remain effective in these key areas if we were to become part of an “all-informed” European Union intelligence structure.

The Americans simply would not hand over key strategic intelligence to us if we were then required to share it with 27 different European intelligence agencies. They rightly suspect that within an hour, it would be on Mr Putin’s desk. In technical terms, the US remains, and will do so for the foreseeable future, generations ahead in the high-speed surveillance, communications and big data processing systems that are now needed to gather intelligence against diverse global threats.

As our long and distinguished history has shown, the UK’s best contribution to maintaining security in Europe will be achieved by standing apart and forming strong alliances – demonstrated by our relationship of trust with the US and our key role in Nato. We can do no better than heed the words of William Pitt the Younger, who declared in 1805: “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”