On the day that Gordon Brown swept into Downing Street as Prime Minister, June 27 2007, he addressed the country: "This will be a new Government with new priorities." So much has happened since then that it is often difficult to recall precisely which of the old priorities he found so inappropriate. Posing outside Number 10, Mr Brown talked about listening to the British people and governing in a new way. And, to be fair, in just two years, many things have changed: banks have been nationalised, unemployment has soared, so too immigration, and the regard in which MPs are held by the electorate has been buried under an avalanche of dodgy expenses. What has not changed, however, is the low priority given to defence spending by an administration that cannot walk past an official statistic without twisting it for tomorrow's headlines. The art of management is about choice, and the Prime Minister and his sinister cabal have made theirs clear. When it comes to the nation's budget, the slice allocated to our Armed Forces, compared with the overall size of the cake, is less today than it was in 2001, when the military campaign in Afghanistan began. Despite the chronic over-stretch being endured by our troops in far-off hell-holes, the bill for which is being paid in the blood of teenage squaddies, defence continues to be treated as an unwelcome distraction that buys few votes. This assertion will, of course, be rejected by ministers panicked by the public's growing