There is, however, an even greater problem facing the Prime Minister. Because I strongly suspect that he’s starting to grasp the real reason why Britain is doomed to lose the next war. It’s not just our inadequate spending on defence, or our complacent reliance on the USA to protect us.

We’ve got a crisis that’s more fundamental, which is that we simply won’t want to fight. For decades now, young people have been taught to be ashamed of this country. They’ve been taught that Britain’s history is one of almost uninterrupted, and unparalleled, cruelty and exploitation and that the figures once hailed as national heroes, from Francis Drake to Churchill, were really villains.

In short: they’ve been taught that the British are the baddies. And so, having had it drilled into them practically from birth that their country is nothing to be proud of, why on earth would they want to risk their lives defending it?

Another leaked plan revealed by Corriere della Sera talks of converting Italy’s struggling car industry into a revamped ecosystem of weapons production, with subcontractors across Lombardy and the Veneto supplying the German armaments plants much as they now supply car components for Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW. “It is becoming obvious to everybody that defence spending is the way to offset job losses in the car industry,” said Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg Bank.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, joined the bidding on Tuesday with an €800 billion “Rearm Europe Plan” using emergency powers under Article 122 of the Treaties, the immediate riposte to Trump’s overnight outrage. Funds are to be rushed into air defence, artillery, missiles and drones, with a target of raising average EU military budgets by 1.5 percentage points of GDP over four years. The mechanisms are vague. The direction of travel is clear.

The immense figures under discussion in Berlin would have been politically unthinkable a week ago, before the total loss of faith in US friendship. If enacted on anything close to this scale, such a high-octane blast of military Keynesianism will entirely change the economic and geopolitical shape of the world. It is the coming boom in Europe that we should all be betting on.

Bavaria’s premier Markus Söder is the weather-vane of our times, leading the call for a full-blown revival of German military power along with a joint nuclear deterrent in concert with France and the UK. “We need a drone force of 100,000 drones, 800 new tanks, 2,000 Patriot missiles and 1,000 Taurus just for Germany as a protective shield like the ‘Iron Dome’. Only the strong will be taken seriously,” he said. The details are fundamentally trivial. Non-US Nato has a combined GDP of $30 trillion (£24 trillion), 14 times the Russian economy.

On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a brand new $840 billion program that will be known as “Rearm Europe”… Of course money won’t be enough to accomplish what European leaders have planned. They are going to need warm bodies as well. As most of you know, elections were just held in Germany, and the group that won is apparently pushing for a rapid reintroduction of “compulsory military service”… A spokesperson for the group that will be heading up the new government has publicly stated that the first new conscripts “will have to walk through the barracks gates in 2025”…

Since the financial crisis, German governments have laboured under its famous “Schuldenbremse”, or debt brake, a strict limit on government borrowing that has hampered efforts to strengthen the Bundeswehr, the German army. Deutsche Bank said the move would open the door to “open-ended borrowing on defence” – raising the prospect that the German armed forces could be scaled up dramatically at a critical time for European defence.

A total rearmament of Germany would likely involve major investment in the production of tanks, long-range missiles and facilities for training more troops, potentially including conscripts. In particular, Germany may want to increase production of Iris-T missiles, its powerful long-range Taurus missiles and its Leopard 2 battle tanks.

There are already signs that German manufacturers are switching from car production to tanks, reflecting an overall shift in Germany’s priorities. Rheinmetall last week announced plans to repurpose two plants, which currently produce auto parts for Germany’s ailing car industry, to mainly build defence equipment. Mr Merz’s CSU/CDU faction suggested this week that conscription would be brought back rapidly, with raw recruits set to enter barracks by the end of the year. The defence ministry may need a cash injection to prepare new facilities for such an influx of troops.

While German industry gears up to transform the army, the chancellor-in-waiting is also making a pitch to return German leadership to the heart of Europe. Mr Merz has also shown some signs that he is ready to stand up to Donald Trump on diplomacy and defence, vowing to make Europe “independent” of Washington. The next step is a crunch vote in the Bundestag, the German parliament, to approve the infrastructure fund and the lifting of the debt brake on defence investments.

The US has hit China with 20 per cent tariffs in response to what the White House considers to be Chinese inaction over the flow of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, into America. Beijing has responded by announcing plans to boost defence spending by 7.2 per cent and hit the US with reciprocal tariffs of 10 to 15 per cent on certain imports from March 10.

In combative statements online, China's ministry of foreign affairs and US embassy warned Washington that "intimidation does not scare us" and criticised Mr Trump for linking tariffs to the fentanyl crisis. The fiery language comes as China's top legislature met for annual Two Sessions meetings in Beijing, where the plans to boost defence spending were revealed.

The rise in spending is equal to the jump last year and takes the official budget to roughly 1.78 trillian yuan (£190 billion), as China pursues the goal of Xi Jinping, its president, to build a modern military by 2027.

On Wednesday, Li Qiang, China’s premier, vowed there would be “all out efforts” to hit the target in his annual address to the legislature. He said Beijing “will step up military training and combat readiness so as to firmly safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests”.

China has stoked alarm with increasingly aggressive moves in Asia and the Pacific – including recent live-fire drills off the Australian coast, military exercises close to Taiwan and Vietnam and confrontations with the Philippine coast guard in the South China Sea. Japan, South Korea and India have all criticised the projections of military might.

Germany’s new chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, said after his victory last week that Europe had to make itself independent from the US and warned Nato could be dead by June. He told reporters, “it is five minutes to midnight for Europe” days after suggesting Germany could ask for the shelter of Britain and France’s nuclear deterrent.

It was an astonishing intervention from an election winner on the night of his victory, who was, until recently, one of Germany’s most nakedly pro-US politicians. Mr Merz’s opinion matters. The leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), should soon take the reins of Europe’s largest economy.

This is not just another salvo in Trump’s long-standing feud with the media. It is a direct challenge to the unchecked power of unelected bureaucrats, partisan operatives and corporate gatekeepers who use anonymity as a shield to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion. For conservatives and free speech advocates, this moment represents a critical opportunity to restore accountability and transparency to a media landscape that has become a breeding ground for corruption.

Anonymous sources have long been a staple of corporate media reporting, particularly when it comes to attacking conservative leaders. These unnamed insiders — often described as "senior officials," "people familiar with the matter," or "sources close to the situation" — are used to peddle unverified claims, smear political opponents and advance partisan agendas. But as Trump has repeatedly pointed out, these sources are often fabricated or exaggerated to fit a predetermined narrative.

“They are made up, defamatory fiction and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty,” Trump declared in a recent statement. He added, “At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist, which they largely do not.”

The use of anonymous sources has become a weapon of choice for the Deep State and its allies in the media. By hiding behind anonymity, these actors can avoid accountability while wielding immense influence over public discourse. The result is a media ecosystem that prioritizes sensationalism over truth and undermines the very foundations of democracy.

But ABC News’ fact checking says that the figure is actually closer to $182 billion, which also includes the cost of making weapons and “restocking US weapons supplies.” In other words, a lot of that “aid” never even left the US.

Trump keeps saying he doesn’t know where all the aid even went. Well, join the club. What’s undeniable is that much of it helped pay for old US weaponry to be promptly turned into expensive fireworks by Russian missiles, and for US weapons makers to churn out some shiny new ones to replace them, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

And here’s where it gets worse. Lenders don’t even want the cars back. Normally, when borrowers can’t pay, banks repossess the vehicles and resell them. Not this time. Instead, they’re handing out loan extensions, pushing payments further into the future, and hoping people can catch up. Because deep down, they know the truth — if they start seizing cars, the used car market could collapse, and those assets might not be worth what they once were.

This isn’t just a blip. This is the consequence of years of easy credit, skyrocketing car prices, and consumers stretched too thin. The auto loan bubble is bursting, and the industry is scrambling to cover the damage.