Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainians’ impossibly brave resistance to it have reminded us of so many things we seemed to have forgotten. It has certainly shaken some of our elites’ more comforting delusions. They told us that history was over. That war and conflict were on the way out, or at the very least confined to far-flung places no one could find on a map. Most powerfully, the war has reminded us just how much nationhood matters; how violating and barbaric it is when borders are breached and another nation’s armour cruises into your town. Nationhood matters to people not for sentimental or jingoistic reasons. But because nations are our communities, our way of life; they are the means through which we collectively shape our society and the world. All this and more is what the Ukrainians are fighting tooth and nail to defend.

This all might sound obvious, because it is. But then our elites have spent decades now deriding the nation state. They present it as a relic, a has-been. And they say national sovereignty should be pooled, diluted and given away to supranational bodies so that we can be ruled by distant experts. Our elites also seem to have convinced themselves that our freedoms are defended by international rights treaties and sharp-suited lawyers, rather than brave men and women willing to fight for them within their own nations, and brave men and women willing to fight to defend those nations against foreign conquest, interference and subjugation.