I have become ever more worried for the world’s future. It seems democracy is under attack from within and without.

The attacks from without are obvious and awful but the attacks from within are insidious and even more damaging. Many countries claim to be democratic but, forgetting those few ludicrous countries that add the word democratic to their names when they are almost the opposite, there are many countries that were ‘democratic’ but which are now, in reality, seriously lacking in the freedoms that democracy should ensure.

My father hated the need for fighting but joined the Royal Navy before the last world war and served (with distinction) mainly in the submarine service. He believed he was fighting an essential battle for the future of democracy.

He also believed that, for democracy to work, it needed the people to vote for what was best for their country and their children rather than, as we so obviously do now, for our own personal gain. As soon as we vote for our personal benefit, rather than the good of the majority, we offer the crooked among our politicians the chance to first hoodwink us with presents and promises and then to protect and consolidate their positions by removing those safeguards that our forebears died to establish and keep.

It seems we are willingly giving up hard-won rights and protection for ‘jam today’ without realising that this ‘jam today’ will, if things carry on as they are, be a very sticky freedom-less mess for all but a powerful and privileged few in a not-so-far-away ‘tomorrow’.