Sky News reports:

Landmark moment as the return of Trump stuns UK into action on defence

The decision to increase military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 has been sparked by a fundamental change in the UK's ability to rely on its strongest ally, the United States.

It goes on to say:

Such a proposal is not something new.

The UK has a long history of being prepared for war.

The entirety of the Cold War era was framed around ensuring the UK had enough troops and reservists to fight a sustained conflict, supported by a vast industrial base to produce weapons and a society that was intrinsically resilient, with the ability to sustain itself with emergency food rations, power supplies and an understanding of the need to be prepared to respond in an emergency.

Back then, the threat was war - maybe even nuclear annihilation - with the Soviet Union.

Today the threat is just as stark but also far more complex.

This is all nonsense.

The UK has a long history of being unprepared for war - the Napoleonic wars, the Boer war, the First World war - but managing to pull the rabbit out of the hat when pushed.

The Cold War era was framed around having enough troops in Germany (up to around 80,000 in the heyday of BAOR - the British Army of the Rhine) to act as a tripwire if the tanks of the Warsaw Pact invaded across the North German plain. British forces were expected to last for a few days in the event of a massed conventional attack by the Soviet Union in order to buy time for what almost certainly would have been a nuclear response.

The 'vast industrial base' is a figment of Sky's imagination after shipyards were closed, aircraft production shutdown from the TSR2 onwards and the UK military essentially came to depend on the USA as their 'backstop' and manufacturing 'arsenal' while the UK morphed into Orwell's 'airstrip one'.

The nuclear V bombers were mothballed and Boscombe Down became a warehousing centre for Home Bargains and the like. Without nuclear armed Trident subs as a 'balance of terror', the UK would be no threat at all.

Although according to a Sky 'explainer' dated 21 February 2024:

The Royal Navy last test-fired an unarmed Trident II D5 ballistic missile in 2016 - and it flew in the wrong direction.

So look out Ireland!

Apparently China, North Korea, Iran and Russia are all threatening the UK militarily. But they are not the ones sending carrier groups to the South China Sea, training Ukrainian troops to fight the Russians and sending billions of pounds of weapons to kill Russians, Yemenis and Palestinians.

Yes folks ... jingoism is alive and well.

But this time it's a Labour government doing the jingoing.