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Rachel Sylvester thinks that Trident is the ultimate boy’s toy. I agree. But that doesn’t mean I think it should be scrapped.

Churchill once said that nuclear weapons were the political equivalent of the “Badge to the Royal Enclosure [at Ascot]”. The great man understood is that just like people, nations are vain; and that their vanity needs soothing.

Perhaps Britain is an irrelevancy in the international arena – most likely it has been that way for a long time. But is that an admission we are prepared to make? Enraged moralists happily embrace self-immolation, but I am not sure the nation does. Are we really ready for a future where our opinion matters just about as much as Sweden’s or New Zealand’s?

I have no data to prove it, but I suspect that Britons gain a sense of satisfaction seeing their country take its place on the global stage. This is most obvious in sport, as the national back-slapping when London won the Olympics proved. But it is also the case in international politics. When Britain takes a hand, it makes us feel that we can make a difference.

The pleasure if comparative, of course, but we will always measure ourselves against our neighbours. It is too late to leave Vanity Fair, so we may as well get used to it here. It is true that a nuclear arsenal is the military equivalent of a penis extension – built not for use in love or war, but for the purposes of vain comparison – but that doesn’t make it meaningless. There is a prideful joy in virile self-assertion that binds a nation together. In this day and age, this is no small feat.

Sylvester argues that the new politics of the global recession neessitiate a different attitude to nuclear deterrence. I take a different attitude. In hard times, you need a few toys to keep yourself happy. What better than the biggest toy of all?