"[G]iven that we are today a country that would be as bankrupt as British Steel if it were not for the lucky strike of North Sea oil, and that our gross national product is only half West Germany's, the attempt to maintain "balanced" forces plus a nuclear deterrent constitutes an exercise in nostalgic unrealism. We are like an impoverished aristocratic family who, by petty economies, struggles to go on living in the gradually decaying ancestral mansion rather than live comfortable within their means in a bungalow. Thirty-five years after the Second World War it really is time that we faced the reality of our true status as a nation and adopted a defence policy appropriate to it."