There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Only three weeks ago, Sir Keir Starmer was considering delaying increasing the United Kingdom’s defence budget until the next decade. ‘Whitehall sources’, a catch-all term of varying reliability, said that the Prime Minister regarded the political costs of cutting public expenditure elsewhere as too great: accordingly, defence, which everyone professes to believe is important but few are willing to prioritise, would have to wait.