This is Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

I should have been thrilled by the maiden voyage of the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. I grew up among warships and naval bases and normally love such things. But I wasn’t. Partly it was the fact that, gigantic as she is, she has all the grace and style of a floating hypermarket, or a seaborne car park. When did we forget how to make ships look beautiful?

But much more important was the knowledge that this painfully expensive leviathan is worse than useless. We madly got rid of our Harriers, the only aircraft we had that could have flown from her decks.

An aircraft carrier which has no planes is a metaphor for uselessness, like a pub with no beer, or a car with no wheels. But that is not the most miserable thing about this event.

Even more important, it is almost a century since we were so unprepared, on land, at sea and in the air, for the unpredictable dangers we face. It has, by the way, been Tory governments, which preen themselves for their own supposed patriotism, who have reduced us to our present pitiful state. The Government knows it has done this.

Retired chiefs of all the Armed Services, speaking with immense knowledge and authority, have publicly warned about it in the House of Lords. Such men generally keep quiet. They must be genuinely distressed to have spoken out. What they say openly will be mild compared with the private views of current admirals, generals and air marshals.

So listen to Lord Craig of Radley, former Marshal of the RAF. Recalling how we were able to sustain severe losses in the Falklands and the first Gulf War because of carefully amassed reserves, he said: ‘Losses today, from a very much smaller order of battle than that of the Eighties, on a scale or rate such as those, would all too rapidly decimate our combat power, our resilience and our stamina.’

In other words, we simply do not now have enough kit to cope with a major war.

He added, tellingly, that it is not much use maintaining a nuclear deterrent unless we maintain our conventional strength as well.

Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, had still worse news. He was even blunter: ‘The Navy has too few ships and men and is having to make incoherent cuts to keep within the budget.’ Important ships (including the former flagship HMS Ocean) were being paid off, and – astonishingly – we will not even have any surface-to-surface or air-to-surface missiles for the next few years. ‘This is not an abstract issue. For a number of years, we will have ships deployed around the globe that may suddenly come across an opponent because things have escalated, and they will have to fight. I have done this, as have many of us here. We will have ships sunk and people killed. I have been in that position. We are standing into danger.’

Lord West also rightly underlined the Navy’s severe manpower crisis. Years of cuts and skill shortages have made life almost intolerable for experienced men and women, seriously overworked, who have left the service and not been replaced. As for Britannia ruling the waves, forget it. Not long ago, the policy was that we should have roughly 50 major surface ships. Not now. Lord West revealed: ‘We have only 19 escorts. This is a national disgrace for our great maritime nation.’

Remember, these are not the words of some tub-thumper on a street corner, but of a senior naval officer of great knowledge and experience.

But I have not finished. Lord Dannatt, a former head of the Army, joined in the sad chorus. Warning that there were ‘just not enough’ serving soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, he was as plain as his brother officers, he said: ‘We have cut the size of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force too far.’

Pointing out that one day we would need an army in a hurry, he said: ‘I worry about the number of soldiers that we have – or, particularly, do not have. We are carrying too much risk. The last Government from 2010 and this present Government might get away with it, but the future will catch us out at some point and the verdict of history will be damning.’

These are words that it took some courage to say and are far more important than most of the minor squabbles now dominating much of our political life. We have been warned. Do we act, or do we pretend we have not heard? We will pay for this, or our children will. We are standing into danger.

The discovery that Jon Snow, the Channel 4 News anchorman, is perhaps a bit Left-wing, is an amazing breakthrough of investigative journalism. Next, intrepid reporters reveal that water is wet and fire burns. Surely the interesting story about Channel 4 (and also the entire BBC) is that anyone still seriously pretends they are not Left-wing. And why they do that.

Helen's fearless - shame about her comrades

The best thing now on television is ITV’s Fearless, in which Helen McCrory plays a courageous lawyerwho genuinely fights for her clients.

Refreshingly, it does not portray our vainglorious ‘security’ services as spotless heroes keeping us safe.

No free country should idolise such people as we now tend to do.

Helen McCrory plays a courageous lawyer who genuinely fights for her clients in ITV's fearless

But it is not flawless. In reality, modern Left-wingers aren’t all as keen on freedom as Ms McCrory’s character, who (we are ceaselessly reminded) was once a tiresome Greenham Common ban-the-bomb type.

On the contrary, they’re all fans of ‘safe spaces’, where incorrect opinions are banned. A drama starring a Right-wing defender of liberty would be an original change.

If only Boris would confront a real tyrant

Our leaders bray like foghorns at miniature tyrants with whom we have little or nothing to do, such as Libya’s Gaddafi and Syria’s Assad. Sometimes they even bomb them.

But when faced with a real despot, who has the power to hurt us, they cringe and, well, kowtow. It is 20 years since China promised us it would maintain the freedoms we left behind in Hong Kong. But China is not keeping its side of the bargain. Freedom of the press, the independence of the courts and the liberty of the education system are constantly being squeezed by Peking’s stooges.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu with Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Boris Johnson

Worse still, people who the Chinese Politburo do not like are brazenly kidnapped in Hong Kong, smuggled across the border into the clutches of Peking’s repressive state, which has never ceased to lock up and persecute free spirits. This is our direct concern. We are not just entitled to protest, but obliged to do so with all the force at our command.

In response, our normally loud Foreign Secretary, Al ‘Boris’ Johnson, speaks softly and carries a small stick. Can this be the same macho Mr Johnson who rather noisily supported Donald Trump’s illegal bombing of Syria, in response to unproven claims about poison gas use? It can.

I have a simple suggestion for Mr Johnson and all those like him. If his outrage against menacing despots is genuine, then he should express it to all who deserve it, including the Chinese. If it is not genuine, then can he please shut up, and write another book?

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