DEFENCE is one of those issues that is often a strange mix of the past, present and future, never more so than right now.

Yesterday, MPs warned that planned spending cuts are so deep they could jeopardise the armed forces’ ability to maintain current operations.

They claim that the strategic defence and security review which will determine where the axe will fall, is being pushed through so quickly that mistakes are bound to be made.

Meanwhile, as politicians were digesting that, the heroics of pilots from RAF Fighter Command and Bomber Command in the Second World War were remembered at a ceremony in London marking the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, whose parliamentary private secretary is Bournemouth East MP Tobias Ellwood, has pledged that the current review is just that, a review and not simply a cost-cutting exercise.

He also promises that nothing in the review will undermine the effort in Afghanistan.

Given the huge sacrifices that have been made in that conflict, not least by the Royal Marines and the Rifles, that promise is one that this government dare not break.

For that alone if it happened, the coalition should face the full fury of the public.

There would be no bigger insult, to those who have served, fought and died. In the last few years. Or seventy years ago.