People who hate our nation’s proud history often counter the genuine-felt mass immigration fear by slamming the UK for ‘not really having an identity’ to damage anyway. That sneering, baiting scoff virtue signals a good soundbite for the left but leaves ordinary, decent Brits of all heritages raging because we know being British is not only brilliant – it stands for something.

I’m not talking about simple flag waving – although having pride in your national colours is what the world’s other 194 countries with flags have. Try tearing their national flags down and see what happens. And I’m not just talking about our fervent belief in decency and human rights (no, not the farcical European Convention one), the right to fair trial, free speech, freedom of religion and thought.

I don’t even mean how Britain repeatedly made amends for dark days in its past like colonialism by creating the Commonwealth of Nations and taking the lead to end the slave trade in 1833, with up to 17,000 British sailors later paying with their lives in the 19th Century to enforce that freedom.

No – I’m talking about core values like loyalty, discipline, integrity and moral courage that many around the world agree is typified by our nation’s Armed Forces, core values entrenched in older UK generations through National Service.

In November we rightly remember those who lost their lives in conflicts past and present, in the hope that there will never be World War Three.

We wear our poppies with pride, we stand silently at 11am – while some carry on shopping – and we remember.

From 1947 to 1963 the UK had National Service, a peacetime conscription where men (as it was back then) aged 17 to 21 served for at least 18 months in the Armed Forces.

My dad still talks about his National Service with the RAF. Admittedly some of his parade ground larks sound like pranks from an Ealing comedy but he talks so fondly of the bond and friendship he found there too.

Last week I spent a day with 300 British Army cadets from all four corners of the UK taking part in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) half-term camp.

These boys and girls aged 14 to 16, of all ethnicities and backgrounds, left me awestruck as they described their pride in wearing their regiment’s cap badge, chests puffing out as some said they want to join the Forces themselves.

The kids mucked in to complete fun tasks like guiding a machine around an obstacle course, clambering over a Challenger II tank, defusing a virtual bomb or flying an Apache helicopter.

If some make their dream of joining our Armed Forces a reality I know it will be all the better for them.

But when Britain’s cadet chief, Brigadier Gary McDade, told me their core values it sounded like those a nation could identify with too – loyalty, discipline, integrity, selfless commitment and moral courage.

Brigadier McDade also told me: “It’s important we educate the cadets about those that have gone before us, our forebears, and what ‘Remembrance’ means.

“But it’s also important we instil good values, standards and leadership – and their requirement to do the right thing in a difficult situation. Moral courage. By doing what we’re doing we will hopefully help society not only now – but in years to come.”

Would bringing back the old style of National Service create more social cohesion and help spread national pride and ‘Britishness’? Maybe – maybe not.

But the Ministry of Defence wants to expand the cadets, and teaching more UK kids these core British values under a cap badge that generations wore proudly in peacetime and the heat of battle sounds like an excellent idea to me.