“I think that sometimes the price of freedom is worth paying and, just remember, it took the democracies in the middle of the last century a long time to recognise that they have to resist tyranny and aggression.

“It was very expensive but what it bought in the end with the defeat of the dictators, particularly of Nazi Germany, it bought decades and decades of stability, a world order that relied on a rules based national system, and that is worth protecting, that is worth defending – that delivers long term prosperity.”