The party political part of me wonders whether this was a too-good-to-loose leftover from the Tory general election campaign that never came, left on standby until Labour’s worst week in a long time. But I also come at this from a background in international organisations and relations, rather than defence as such, and I do have a lot of respect for people prepared to put their lives on the line for their country. So I can’t quite believe it is purely a party issue, despite the very personal nature of several of the comments.

One issue that I can see getting senior military people upset is what they may regard as trespassing on their professional territory. Could it be that the real concern is the early stages of a public debate not so much on the level of spending, but its focus? Traditionally, defence spending has very much been a matter, once the level is determined, of service chiefs themselves deciding how it is spent. But issues such as whether to proportionately fund the Army at a higher level than the Navy or the Air Force (perhaps taking into account Labour’s natural sympathy with the ‘poor bloody infantry’), and the balance between procuring jets and carriers over helicopters and uninhabited aircraft, are starting to bubble into the public domain. Perhaps questions are even being increasingly asked, confidentially, across Whitehall? But given the likely continuing calls on the military, within a complex political context both internationally and domestically, political debate in this area would seem to be warranted, and without it simply asking for more money is unlikely to get very far.