I’ve been on a long long journey, which has been both fascinating and arduous. I’ve spent sometime in a foreign land, which while interesting has left me severely injured and hurt.

My story begins many years ago when my family and I decided to go on a safari to a land many miles from here.

All of the planning and administration went relatively well. There were of course hiccups with some compliance and currency issues. A lot of countries when you visit them want to know a lot about you, but overall after some time we embarked on our journey. The trip was pleasant. We saw lots of new things. We traded and shared fascinating experiences with people from a new diverse culture. They were friendly and helpful and often helped us by coming to our camp and selling us food and clothing without hindrance and we in turn gave them some money and advice. Everything seemed to be going well. The weather was warm and sunny and we had enough to eat and we were healthy and most of all happy on our travels.

Then one day tragedy struck. I remember it vividly. We were camped by a large gently flowing river. The campsite was perfect with fishing, lots of natural fruits and vegetation and our supplies were plentiful. People from the local village were with us during the evening and we had a bountiful meal together, drank a little too much wine, as is our want. The evening was balmy, the moon bright and it seemed nothing could go wrong.

We retired peacefully to bed later than usual and as I snuggled down into my sleeping bag and zipped myself in, my last thought was what a wonderful life. I wanted it go on forever and hoped my children and their children would enjoy all the things that I had enjoyed in the future.

During the night I woke suddenly. Frightened, rigid with shock as I felt myself zipped into my bag being slowly but inexorably being dragged inch by inch to the cold uninviting river’s edge. I frantically tried to reason through the fog of sleep what was happening and realised that my legs were clamped in these enormous alligator jaws and this prehistoric, huge monster was dragging me to my death. The pain was enormous as this 16 foot, 1000 pound monster, whose bite force on my legs of 3,700 pounds, was forcing me into and out of consciousness.

I couldn’t scream or fight, I was traumatised by fear.

As we entered the water I knew from previous knowledge, that now came the death roll. Over and over and over, turning constantly in the water. One moment submerged and struggling for breath, the next relief as I broke the surface and gulped a lungful of air. I knew how this was going to end and resigned myself to the inevitable. As I blacked out, I thought only of my family, who I loved dearly and would not see again.

Miraculously, I woke to find myself in a stinking muddy hole, full of the rank detritus of bones and putrefying flesh.  I was alive, but barely breathing. I did not appear to have too many incapacitating injuries and if I could unzip the sleeping bag, which had probably saved me, there was just a small possibility I could escape before the animal returned. I discovered later, they drag their prey off to the lair built into the river’s bank and once decomposed and rotten they feed relentlessly over a period of time until all is devoured. I did not want that to happen to me. I was determined now to escape.

I could see the light at the end of the tunnel lair as the moon bounced off the black river water. I had so little time to take decisive action.

I struggled out of my sleeping bag and crawled to the entrance of the lair. I could see our camp across the river and slipped into the water terrified, expecting those jaws to clamp themselves around my body again. Slowly, oh so slowly and quietly, I swam to the camp side and roused my family.

They were shocked and relieved beyond belief. Happy to have me back but realised I needed immediate medical attention. The local villagers were roused and they helped with everything, giving of their time and effort to help me back into recovery.

I nearly perished but through my own fortitude and the help of others I am now recovered.

Several years later, I realised what a lucky escape I had had, as this alligator was famous throughout this part of the country and had caused the deaths of many unwary travellers. He was known throughout the land as Brexitasaurus.

For twenty months now since the referendum on European membership and the result by a small margin to leave, I have gone through a gamut of emotions.

It has been akin to bereavement for me and possibly like me, others who voted to remain. At first anger, which no matter how I try, still resonates and then utter sadness and disappointment at my fellow countrymen and women, who for my part have been myopic, jingoistic and nationalistic on a grand scale hiding behind a cloak of faux patriotism.

I am wrong and have attributed negative qualities to my fellow Britons because I wanted to lash out and try to impress upon them how wrong they are. I have not fully understood their concerns and fears until now. I have been reading a book called “The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches’, which my daughter gave me for Christmas . Please note, that is not famous speeches, but speeches from all political figures and even moving soliloquies by people addressing the court, who were sentenced to death, for crimes they did not commit.

 The speech which brought me great clarity about where we now find ourselves as a nation was spoken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt on his inauguration as U.S. President on 4^th March 1933 (how coincidental that 2^nd March 2018 May made her definitive Brexit speech, which I listened to in its entirety). Roosevelt’s speech is entitled: –

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

This speech was at the time when the Great Depression was at its worst and America seemed beyond help and Roosevelt paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau’s writings where he says “ Nothing is so much to be feared as fear” galvanised the public mood and almost single handedly saved America, who then went on to play such a great part in helping the Allies to defeat the Nazi threat in World War 2.

That got me rethinking my perception of why we as a country find ourselves in the position of exiting an institution, which has done us, overall much good.

My conclusion is I have attributed these rather nasty and insular characteristics to my fellow Britons when in fact the movement to leave was whipped up by a few political and other influential figures that saw their elite power being eroded by the level of workers and human rights raised and substantiated by the European institutions. Power to the many not the few and erosion of deference is a powerful driver for those who have traditionally held power in this country. So, how have they achieved this?

By creating unprecedented levels of fear.

Fear of other people, fear of the dissolution of our heritage, our culture, our traditions and most of all our sovereignity.

But what do we as nation have to fear from belonging to a powerful political and trading bloc, which now and in the future will hold great sway in the world economy and affairs? Why do we, a nation that has defeated the most dangerous enemies the world has seen, created and lost the biggest Empire the world has seen, have the most innovative, creative and dynamic people in the world, who have given and continue to give the world, education, science, art and media, what is it we fear, if it isn’t fear itself?

Instead why not recognise the strengths of our culture, heritage and traditions, which no other nation has ever, and can ever take from us and play our part in shaping and influencing the great institutions of Europe, so we can be part of something that will also shape the world. Because I believe it is only fear that holds us back and will condemn us to isolation and end in us becoming a second rate nation, without influence in the world, without a voice that is listened to, as it always has been.

Don’t let the small group of influential dogmatists bent only on their own self-interest make us all afraid and take a back seat from the world.

As Roosevelt said all those years ago and which is even more poignant in today’s world.

“We have nothing to fear, except fear itself”.

I woke this morning to another devastating blow to democracy and freedom. Another shift to the right, that emphasises the differences between us all and highlights not what brings us together but which polarises us all apart.

The “Land of the Free”, the country to which the rest of the world look to for examples of democracy and true representative freedom have elected a man who has openly stated throughout his campaign, racist, misogynist and homophobic views about his own countrymen and women. Those he wishes to lead.

I am at a loss as to say what this will mean for the rest of the world because Trump has not articulated any political policies merely hatred of others. The worry of course is that so many people who then went on to defend or condone those views and voted for him to attain the highest office in the world, have ignored this.

I believe we can relate all of the seismic political shifts over the last few years, to the bankers who devastated the economies of the world through their greed and whilst they continued to collect their mega bonuses after a short period of contrition, more and more people lost out and became poorer and poorer. In the biggest capitalist project in the world this is unforgiveable and it only needed a Trump to emphasise those differences and create the necessary unrest to give us the result we have today.

Career politicians just don’t get it! We do not trust them. We don’t trust them to tell the truth, we don’t trust them to answer the question, we don’t trust them to act on our behalf, we don’t trust them to collect the taxes due from the rich, we don’t trust them to regulate the behaviour of bankers and other greedy capitalists and we don’t trust them to behave appropriately with their expenses.

And so we get BREXIT and Trump. Well Trump’s theme tune throughout was The Stones classic track “You don’t always get what you want” and that maybe true but perhaps we’re getting what we deserve?

As a professional soldier for over two decades, soldiering through the Cold War of the sixties, seventies and eighties, I was briefed and learnt the principles of nuclear deterrence which I never really questioned as they seemed to make so much sense to me. Surely, it was sensible that if the enemy had nuclear weapons then so should we, in order to deter them from using them. It also seemed to work, Europe had over 70 years of relative peace and even though the political philosophies of East and Western Europe were completely at odds, it never manifested itself in all out European war and we enjoyed the most peaceful period across the continent since time began.

Business flourished as a result, borders became open and European countries drew ever closer to each other despite their differences. Then in 1989 the unthinkable happened and the Cold War ended with the symbolic destruction of the Berlin wall. What can be wrong with nuclear deterrence if it can achieve all that?

The primary principle of nuclear deterrence, I was taught, was based upon the theory of “Graduated Response”. This means that we never resort to the ultimate destructive nuclear weapons we possess but in fact gradually increase our response to the threat posed. So, in any conflict situation we respond initially with conventional weapons, and then escalate to tactical battlefield nuclear weapons and finally intercontinental nuclear weapons whilst constantly keeping all diplomatic channels open to resolve the political issues before the conflict is escalated. Deterrence is based on the fact that the enemy never knows or can guess our level of response and so by keeping them guessing we never enter into a nuclear response and peace is maintained. Ultimately, we always keep the option of any of these responses as a first strike option. I therefore ignored the CND marchers, passing them off as naïve do-gooders and never voted for Foot and the Labour party during this time of my militancy.

And then a funny thing happened. Corbyn got elected to lead the Labour party and he again espoused what I believed to be a dead dogma of nuclear disarmament once again and this got me thinking about the subject once more and my conclusions surprised me completely.

To replace Trident will cost upwards of £50Bn and we know from past experience how these costs can often spiral out of control and so the cost maybe a lot more than that. The current government is adamant we need this deterrence in light of how dangerous the world is at the moment with the threats posed by Putin (now also in Syria militarily and Ukraine) Islamic State and the threat that poses in the Middle East, the turmoil in the Levant, mostly caused by our illegal war in Iraq and the constant thorn in the side of peace in the region caused by the military autonomy of the Israelis and their persecution of the Palestinians with complete impunity and lack of action and in fact subliminal support by the West.

Whether any of these threats will ever require the ultimate nuclear response is very doubtful.

So the use of our nuclear weapons to be effective will either require a pre-emptive strike or a retaliatory strike. It is upon this basis that we maintain the peace. No state will contemplate the use of nuclear weapons because the opposition hold the ultimate response of complete destruction of our enemies either pre-emptively or retaliatory.

Let us then examine the pre-emptive strike option.

Can anybody ever imagine the circumstances in which we will use a pre-emptive strike against our enemies? Throughout all the wars, which have happened throughout the world since the end of the Second World War, no nuclear weapon has ever been deployed. I believe this is because the response would be so catastrophic to us that the benefit of deploying it to bring the enemy to heel would be lost in military, political and economic terms.

It would effectively be like shooting ourselves in the foot. When engaged in conflict with enemies who did not possess nuclear weapons, the end clearly did not justify the means, and so we have never used them, again for the reasons given.

A pre-emptive strike is a game changer bringing about Armageddon and no military benefits.

Let us now examine the retaliatory strike option.

The only circumstance in which this could happen would be in response to an incoming nuclear strike, but the same rules apply to our enemies as to us and so when would an enemy use the nuclear pre-emptive strike option when trying to exercise political will against us? That’s the first question. My next question is, even if they did use a nuclear strike against us what benefits do we achieve militarily by a retaliatory strike. If it means we then stop the conflict, that’s fine but we don’t know and never will know that.

So this leads me to the question, how effective is nuclear deterrence?

I now believe that there is no justification for spending huge amounts of public money on a tool, which will never be used and does nothing to keep us safe and secure. I now believe, like Corbyn and many other people over the years like him, who advocated using that public money, particularly in todays economic climate, to bolster public services and improve the capability of our Armed Services, where I believe our primary and ultimate deterrent lays.

I am not a pacifist and firmly believe in national self defence and that military action is the ultimate extrapolation of political policy. What I cannot believe is the huge cost, which this government tries to dupe us into believing is required to preserve our national safety, whilst ignoring the plight of the poor and underprivileged in our society during these very difficult economic times.

£50Bn would go a long long way.