“IT’S not the size that matters….It’s what you do with it.” I have to admit that I have never been at all sure what that little saying means. But it certainly applies to Mr Trump’s Nuclear Button. Bragging that “his is bigger than Mr Kim’s” is, of course, a demonstrably foolish thing to say. Everyone knows that America has vastly greater nuclear capability than North Korea. But one small North Korean nuke in Midtown Manhattan would spell catastrophe in world affairs for generations to come.

I am all in favour of deterrence amongst mutually intelligent regimes – the Soviet Union and US, for example. But I am just not convinced that Mr Kim understands the philosophy behind ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’, nor whether or not it holds much terror for him. David and Goliath spring to mind.

The same sizeism applies in many areas of public life. Does spending more automatically mean it gets better? Not at all. The NHS, for example, has had more and more public funds lavished on it in every year of its existence. It’s gone from about £10 billion, or 3.5 per cent of GDP when the NHS was founded in 1948, to about £134 billion, or nine per cent of GDP today.

The rate of increase in spending has grown enormously in recent years, averaging about eight per cent per annum. But do we really have an exponentially improved health service to show for it? I think not. More and more does not necessarily mean better and better.

The opposite philosophy, of course, applies in most modern technological worlds. ‘The smaller it is, the better it is’ is a reasonable summary. At least until iPads, teenagers used to boast “Mine is smaller than yours”. In the post-Christmas bloat, most of us would probably agree that a smaller girth is better than a big one. And the bigger the Empire, the less likely it is to thrive and prosper – Rome, Greece, Nazis, Communists, the EU. Even the British Empire seems like the twinkling of an eye in our long history.

Do you remember the tale of the Texas cattleman and the old Wiltshire smallholder? “I get into my automobile and it takes me three days to drive right around my ranch”. “Oh yes,” said the yokel, “I used to have a car like that too”.

It’s the small battalions which really matter – the truly local; each individual voter. It’s the little things in life, the kindnesses, the little jokes, small businesses that are what real life is all about.

As Shakespeare says: “A small thing; but mine own.” Giant international corporations; mega-deals; globalism, growth for growth’s sake. It’s the big things which cause so much that is bad in the world today.

So yours may be bigger than mine, but just watch out what you do with it.