Whether it's just another piece of long range sniping by some disaffected journalist or not (his girlfriend was probably being porked by a fat Tornado Nav), the effective counter to this is for the RAF to establish its relevance in today's conflicts. By relevance, that means providing a demonstrable example of how the bulk of RAF funding is delivering a significant capability to the warfighters.
That's an easy enough exercise when looking at transport, support helicopters, dedicated CAS (Harrier) and the supporting infrastructure that goes with it. The logic falters somewhat when the 232 (or whatever is is today) Typhoons show up with the £32 billion price tag. However long and hard you argue about "future threats" and "Air Superiority', when you can't run the AT fleet without robbing museums, and can't you provide a software fix for a few very critical rotary assets because you don't have the money, that £32 billion starts to look like the biggest White Elephant in Christendom.
It doesn't have to be true, it only needs to provide the detractors with a foothold and suddenly the future of the RAF is open to debate.
Relevance is the only thing that matters.