“Here’s an idea,” wrote Jeremy Clarkson on X. “Instead of national service, which is obviously idiotic, how about kids working on farms.” Cue the inevitable mockery: the lads of Chipping Norton are turning to Chairman Mao for inspiration. Yet, when you think about it, Clarkson’s suggestion is not so stupid.

The same geopolitical events forcing politicians to turn their attention to military budgets and national service are also causing them to reconsider some of the most basic tenets of our economy — including farming. For much of the previous few decades, we took for granted that global supply chains were secure and current account deficits mattered little, because Britain could always attract investment from abroad. After the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Liz Truss-induced national meltdown, the world looks very different.

Where Britain once looked well-suited to the modern, globalised world economy — an open, liberal floodplain for global cash to wash into — today the country looks particularly vulnerable. Having sold off much of our core infrastructure, we are more dependent than most for some of the basic necessities of modern life: chemicals, steel, oil, gas and, of course, food. Our dependence on such imports contributes to the persistent and increasingly enormous current account deficit, placing pressure on the pound which itself seems to get ever weaker without ever producing the expected export growth.