PATRICK BISHOP: No measure of Great Britain’s shrunken status is so poignant as the decline to insignificance of our once mighty Navy

In July 1914, with the world on the brink of war, King George V inspected just some of the ships standing ready to protect Britain in the coming maelstrom. From the deck of the Royal Yacht, he watched 59 battleships and dozens of cruisers and destroyers pass aft at a steady 16 knots from Spithead off the Isle of Wight. Only half of the Royal Navy’s active service strength was raised. It still took six hours for the column to pass.

The world is once again in a dangerous place. But if King Charles had reviewed the warships of his Navy that are fit to protect our interests today, the same exercise would have lasted 11 minutes.

No measure of how small Britain has become is more poignant and significant than the fact that our once mighty and prestigious Navy has become almost insignificant.

By 1914, Britain had the largest fleet the world had ever seen and was capable of deploying forces to every corner of the globe. Those were the days when the world map was filled with red ink and the sun never set on the Empire. Even 44 years ago, when Britain was in apparent decline, Margaret Thatcher’s government could still muster a fleet that would make Rudyard Kipling reach for his pen.

I saw it as a young war correspondent in the spring of 1982, at the anchorage of Ascension Island, where the gray hulls of aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates stretched toward the horizon, filled with Paras and Marines who would go on to liberate the Falklands. This was the last time the Navy could muster its strength for such a feat; An amphibious operation 8,000 miles away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, if the French had thought of seizing Jersey, the difficulty of finding ships capable of carrying the force to deport them would probably have been beyond the Senior Service.

The 44-year-old minesweeper HMS Middleton returned from the Gulf earlier this week for a major inspection after its safety certificates expired after Iran began rigging the Strait of Hormuz with mines.

You don’t have to be an Empire nostalgist to lament the pathetic state of today’s Navy. There are currently 63 ships in apparent active service; Less than half of those in 1982. The most powerful surface units are the new aircraft carriers Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth, six Type 45 guided missile destroyers and seven Type 23 frigates. Beneath the waves are ten nuclear submarines, four of which can launch ballistic missiles.

There are also various mine countermeasures, patrol and research vessels. Despite the increasing threats from Russia and Cyprus in Tehran’s eyes, only half of these ships are combat ready.

The Queen Elizabeth has been plagued by technical problems since entering service in 2017 and was forced to withdraw from a major NATO exercise two years ago due to a major failure in its propeller shaft. It is currently in dry dock in Rosyth, Scotland, undergoing six months of basic repairs.

All but three of the submarines are out of service. Of the six destroyers, HMS Dragon finally sailed for the Mediterranean. HMS Duncan and Dauntless are available. The other three are in ‘deep care’. Three to five of the seven frigates are operational.

Those in action often seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the Greenland crisis broke out earlier this year, it became clear that the nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Anson was heading in the wrong direction for deployment to Australia. This week, just as Iran began rigging the Strait of Hormuz with mines, came the sombre and hilarious news that the 44-year-old minesweeper HMS Middleton had returned to Blighty from the Gulf for a major inspection after its safety certificates expired.

Who is responsible for this dismal underperformance? Top commanders, now plentiful with 40 admirals compared to 53 in the glory days of 1982, must bear some of the blame. The most important of the charges against them was that they had acquiesced in the Blair government’s decision to commission two huge and extremely expensive carriers rather than a series of smaller and more agile ships.

The election was always controversial. ‘We could have had 100 BMWs instead of six Ferraris,’ complained a retired naval officer. The Navy’s flat-footed response to the Iran crisis has done nothing to prove the gambit correct. No one can blame the 38,000 men and women of the Royal Navy who, despite all the odds, continue to do their duty cheerfully and efficiently.

The real traitors are politicians. Successive governments have all been found guilty of reflexively cutting defense budgets when economies needed it and failing to take into account the growing threats on the horizon since the turn of the century.

Communism had not yet collapsed when it became clear that the end of the Cold War did not mean the dawn of eternal peace but the beginning of a different kind of conflict. Globalization has only increased our vulnerability. Official indifference was ensured by tolerant America, which until Donald Trump was ready to foot most of the bill for Europe’s defense. This resulted in a steady erosion of the military budget to the point that the Navy now threatened to become irrelevant.

Unwilling to see defense spending as an urgent priority and still reluctant to acknowledge the dangers inherent in today’s fragile and unstable global environment, the self-deluded British public has allowed the Conservative and Labor governments to get away with it.

European allies such as France faced the same budgetary pressures and bowed to the same wishes. But they responded much more convincingly to the new facts. President Emmanuel Macron embarrassed Keir Starmer with his sudden decision to send the French fleet’s sole carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to the Eastern Mediterranean while the Prime Minister hesitated to send the Prince of Wales and then decided not to.

While the collapse of the Royal Navy is depressing, it is not just a story about numbers in the Ministry of Defence’s inventory. It also tells us a lot about the transformation of national attitudes and how Britain sees itself in the world.

I saw how the gray hulls of aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates stretched to the horizon, filled with Paratroopers and Marines who would go on to liberate the Falkland Islands in 1982.

For centuries the Royal Navy was the pillar of our island nation. Sea power was at the heart of the country’s wealth and was the instrument that gave it enormous influence far beyond its size and population. What made Britain great was the navy.

Naval officers were a high caste and household names of the most successful commanders, respected by the public. There are more pubs named after Trafalgar hero Horatio Nelson than any other historical figure.

Respect for the navy was underpinned by recognition of geographical foundations. Britain’s security depended on command of the surrounding seas. And Britain’s prosperity depended on control of the ocean trade routes that fueled our wealth.

There was also widespread recognition of a harsh historical fact. 19th-century statesman Lord Palmerston famously said: ‘We have no permanent allies and no permanent enemies. Our interests are eternal and permanent, and it is our duty to pursue them.’

These facts have been denied by the last generation of politicians. They forgot the vital link between sea power and security. And they have allowed the illusion of human progress to blind them to the atavistic impulses that lurk beneath the surface of seemingly civilized nations.

Britain’s pathetic belief that its relationship with America was ‘special’ was always a fantasy. Every week, Donald Trump provides a painful reminder of the truth of Palmerston’s words.

It was not a mistake that French president Charles de Gaulle had ever made. It was thanks to his suspicion of American good faith that France insisted on having a fully independent ‘Force de Frappe’ nuclear deterrent force. Sixty-six years later, their concerns turned out to be entirely justified. Poland and Germany are now pushing for a place under the French nuclear umbrella, in the belief that America cannot be assumed to have their back in the event of a showdown with Russia.

We don’t have such a luxury. Carrying American might has led to a crippling reliance on their technology. A British prime minister could theoretically launch a nuclear bomb without Washington’s permission. However, the Trident missiles with which our submarines are equipped are provided by the USA.

In recent years, the misguided strategy of siding with America, rightly or wrongly, in order to make ourselves big on the world stage has made us look like stooges and garnered little respect from Washington.

Any fundamental rethinking of our security strategy must be built on the principles that underpinned the policies that made Britain an unlikely world power in the first place. Recent events prove once again that if you do not have a strong navy, you cannot be taken seriously.

China understands this very well. It can command up to 400 warships, versus the 290 to 300 operated by the US Navy, making it the most populous fleet in the world (although the larger ships of the American fleet mean the tonnage is almost twice that). At the same time, we must put aside the ‘special relationship’ nonsense once and for all and accept that no matter who follows Trump into the White House, we can never take America’s good will for granted from now on.

A new strategy based on old principles is meaningless without the huge amounts of money needed to support it. This, in the Government’s belief, is St. Paul on the road to Damascus. It will require the same level of transformation as Paul’s. Indecisive, historically ignorant and lacking a coherent strategic vision, Starmer and his team clearly lack the purpose, will and moral strength for such an initiative.

It’s not entirely their fault. The society that brought them to power also bears its share of this crime. The British still admire the military and have an endless nostalgia for the Second World War.

There is little incentive to pay for a proper Army, Air Force and Navy, let alone join them.

Recruitment and retention across all services has been a struggle for decades, with the Navy in particular reaching only 60 per cent of its recruitment target in 2023-2024, compared to 65 per cent for the Army and 70 per cent for the RAF. Life on the ocean wave has lost its appeal if it means being away from partners, family and friends for long periods of time.

There is a bigger problem. Social research shows that young Britons are generally resistant to the idea of ​​military service.

In this regard, the country cannot keep up with our neighbors in Europe. In surveys last year, nearly 50 percent of French men and women under 30 said they were prepared to sign up and serve in the military in the event of war, compared with just 11 percent of Britons.

The heady days of the Spithead review are gone forever, and given our status as a mid-sized power, we would be foolish to wish for their return. But we desperately need a small but properly functioning Royal Navy. We cannot achieve this without a major change in government policy and public attitudes.

Patrick Bishop’s book, The Northern Cape: The Navy’s Last Great Naval Battle, will be published next year.