In her audacious and intellectually compelling address to last year’s Conservative Party conference she discomfited some listeners by stating directly that “if you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”. She understands that it is only if you start with a sense of belonging that you can develop a genuinely resilient ethic of giving. And it is only through belief in the dignities, traditions and beauties of your own nation that you best equip yourself to defend European civilisation in its noblest, and broadest, sense.

A commitment to democracy as a way of keeping power accountable and government responsive acquires extra depth and meaning if you yourself have grown up witnessing, and benefitting from, a robust democratic culture. A belief in the importance of individual rights and responsibilities comes more easily from immersion in a culture where the common law has been the rootstock of liberty’s tree. A desire to preserve the global environment springs, most naturally and enduringly, from a love of natural beauty and an attachment to special places which have enchanted our young minds. A willingness to make sacrifices to secure the next generation’s future against threats from totalitarians and extremists flows most naturally from an awareness of how previous generations have served King and Country to defeat militarism and fascism.

That is why it is no contradiction, indeed a natural consequence, of the Prime Minister’s attachment to our nation and its traditions that she should want the country she believes in so deeply to be seen as a leader on the world stage, confident in its values, conscious of how widely they are shared, and committed to their defence and promotion.

The Prime Minister’s vision of global Britain is a reflection of the role our nation has always played throughout history. We have governed ourselves but traded with the world. We have embodied ideals of liberty in our own, peculiar, institutions and encouraged freedom-loving peoples everywhere, we have taken pride in our distinctive culture and national conversation even as our language became a global lingua franca and our fates became entwined with more and more nations.

And that vision is given concrete form in the policies Mrs May has pursued since entering Number Ten.

While we leave the European Union we do not, and cannot, relinquish our responsibility to uphold European solidarity. Our contribution to the defence of the European continent against anti-democratic threats, whether from Putin’s Russia or Islamist extremists, must be redoubled. The Prime Minister’s commitment to spend 2 per cent of our GDP on defence enables us to commit to a presence in the Baltic States to safeguard Nato’s security guarantee. Our growing naval strength, superb special forces and modernised military, alongside superlative intelligence capabilities, makes us an indispensable part of the West’s security architecture.