You know, I'm fairly sure the 51% of people who think defence should be cut aren't actually thinking of defence in general terms. I think they're probably thinking in very specific terms, along the lines of "Why are we spending billions on a weapons system that we will NEVER use, when we have weapons systems that we ARE using that are woefully underfunded and under-resourced".... In other words getting rid of Trident in favour of conventional forces. That certainly IS one part of our defence budget that we will not use without the Americans, so why bother?!