The key to conservatism is knowing what to conserve: what we're rightly treasuring and what's turning us into Gollum; what's an antique tapestry and what's a snot-streaked security blanket. Some would fight for the three-pin plug; others say that we lost everything that mattered when Kit Kats changed their wrappers. Some feel a tradition of public service broadcasting is worth hanging onto, others that being an attractive environment for rapacious financial practices is crucial to our way of life. Personally, I don't think things have been the same since Consignia changed its name to Royal Mail.

Many take pride in our martial traditions. We don't see ourselves as a violent people, going around the world kicking the crap out of everyone. So much so that, when we have, instead of pissing off gracefully like the Vikings with a tip of a horned helmet and a "Thank you for the rape, ma'am", we've hung around, setting up schools and churches in which to teach people how much better off they are without all that crap that we kicked out of them. Our self-image is of a strong but gentle people who, when violence regrettably breaks out, do what is necessary: contact the Americans.

Consequently, many conservatives, whether Tory or not, dislike our new military agreements with France. We're going to be sharing nuclear research, aircraft carriers and air-to-air refuelling. And this with a country which is famously – and I know I'll get some stick for saying this but, let's face it, it's a fact – riddled with clap. It's called "the French disease" – is that a coincidence? Are you going to tell me that "French bread" is a coincidence? Because I've been there and baguettes are EVERYWHERE. And they call it la maladie anglaise which means they're insulting as well as syphilitic.

But David Cameron isn't that sort of conservative. He's delighted with the deal because, by sharing services with France, we can conserve both our military capability and more of our money. Not all of his backbenchers agree: Bernard Jenkin MP said the Americans would "cut us off" from their technology if they felt we were sharing intelligence "too freely" with a country that has "a long track record of duplicity".

Like all opponents of the deal, he's hedging round his real concern. He hates that it'll mean we won't be able to invade France any more. That's what our armed forces were basically set up to do, isn't it? True, we've found other uses for them – peacekeeping, colonial expansion, defending ourselves against Germany – but that's not what they're primarily for.

I don't really think lots of Eurosceptic Tories actually want to attack France, but they want to be able to. It gets them out of bed in the morning – the thought that, if all else fails, we could fling ourselves at the Normandy coast, get it out of our system, like a 48-year-old man screwing his secretary and joining a band. They'll miss that sense of possibility and, indeed, of mercy – of restraint demonstrated every day that, once again, this great nation chooses not to nuke France.

It's like Manchester United and Chelsea, in some dystopian future when they've become footballing irrelevancies, sharing a goalie. "Would Sir Alex Ferguson have stood for this?" their supporters will say, just as now military conservatives ask: "Would Sir Winston Churchill?"

The answer is: "Yes, he would." In June 1940, Churchill proposed not just a military accord but a complete merger of the French and British states. The official offer from the British coalition government read as follows: "France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies." There's a coalition that's thinking about a big society.

They turned us down though, one minister saying that it's "better to be a Nazi province" than a British dominion. I hope Canada and Australia don't feel like that. To me, the episode shows that Churchill, who was no radical, better prioritised what to conserve than the Pétainist-dominated French cabinet, than appeasers like Baldwin and Halifax, than the Daily Mail at the time, than Spelthorne Business Forum today.

I should clarify that Spelthorne Business Forum aren't apologists for Hitler. They're the group who are proposing that Staines should change its name to Staines-on-Thames to distance itself from Ali G. You might question why they care. Well, Staines comes under the aegis of Spelthorne borough council – it's basically in Spelthorne, which makes me wonder whether a quicker solution to their problem might be to refer to their home as Spelthorne, not Staines.

There are several things wrong with this campaign. First, it's unnecessary. As a comic phenomenon, Ali G peaked several years ago. Staines is surely through the worst that those associations can bring.

Second, they've missed the joke that Sacha Baron Cohen was making by locating Ali G in Staines. He's not saying that it's "an urban wasteland off the end of the M25", as Alex Tribick, chair of the forum, laments with apparent ignorance of the shape of the M25. Baron Cohen is saying it's precisely the unremarkable satellite town it is. Ali G's citing of "Da West Staines Massiv" perfectly encapsulates how his clumsy "gangsta" image belies his middle-class suburban background. He is making the character ridiculous, not the place.

Third, it smacks of snobbery. It reminds me of the petition by some residents to change the name of the tube station near me, Kilburn, to Mapesbury. They just wanted it to sound posher. That's not an admirable desire. By all means, aspire to a pleasant, safe, leafy area, but it's not going to become one by calling it Darlingford or stop being one because its name's Grottibotts.

Property prices form an unofficial tax on this vanity: if you want to live somewhere that sounds swanky, do so in the knowledge that you've been overcharged for your dwelling. And it should be an honour for Staines to be associated with a classic comic creation – it puts it up there with Neasden, Peckham and Torquay.

This is badly prioritised conservatism, a willingness to jeopardise a place's identity to conserve its reputation or a few locals' view of its reputation. Incidentally, Churchill had no truck with these experiments in civic cosmetics, impishly writing to the Foreign Office: "You should note, by the way, the bad luck which always pursues peoples who change the names of their cities. Fortune is rightly malignant to those who break with the traditions and customs of the past."