‘Churchill would have sacked the lot of them’: Donald Trump brutally mocks Royal Navy’s ‘toy aircraft carriers’ as Britain is forced to beg Germans for warship
The Royal Navy has been forced to borrow a German frigate because it is ‘running out of ships’ after Donald Trump mocked Britain’s aircraft carriers as ‘toys’.
The destroyer HMS Dragon was due to lead a NATO mission in the North Atlantic before being redeployed to Cyprus earlier this month following the Iran conflict.
The Navy will now manage the NATO deployment using the German frigate FGS Sachsen.
The move comes after the US President dealt another blow to the British military yesterday, saying British aircraft carriers were ‘not the best’, adding: ‘They are toys compared to what we have.’
Last night, as former senior officers branded the Government a ‘bloody disgrace’, the Second World War Royal Marines veteran fumed: ‘Winston Churchill would have fired most of them.’
The criticism comes just weeks after the UK was rescued by France, Greece and Italy after an Iranian drone struck RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and not a single British ship was in a position to defend it.
It took HMS Dragon nearly a month to reach the Mediterranean island, prompting calls for Cypriots to remove British bases from their country.
Now the nonsense has deepened further as the deployment has revealed just how short Britain’s defensive capabilities are.
Royal Navy forced to borrow a German frigate after ‘running out of ships’ – Donald Trump (pictured February 28) had mocked Britain’s aircraft carriers, calling them ‘toys’
The destroyer HMS Dragon (pictured in March) was due to lead a NATO mission in the North Atlantic before being redeployed to Cyprus earlier this month following the Iran conflict.
Experts called on Labor to take control of the situation, while Defense Secretary John Healey said he was “not happy with the situation” because “it takes six years to build a warship”.
However, despite repeated promises to increase defense spending, it was revealed yesterday in NATO’s annual report that Britain revised its defense spending downwards.
Secretary-General Mark Rutte has released figures showing the UK spent 2.31 per cent of GDP on defense last year; this rate was an estimated 2.4 percent.
The report also reduced the UK’s 2024 spending from an estimated 2.33 per cent of GDP to 2.28 per cent.
UK military sources insist there has been no reduction and that the decline is due to changes in GDP, with other countries experiencing similar revisions.
But increasingly angry former NATO commander General Sir Richard Shirreff told the Daily Mail that the latest debacle with FGS Sachsen ‘sends a terrible message’.
He said: ‘This is hugely disgraceful and undermines the sense of what we need to do as a nation. The government needs to make sacrifices. We cannot continue to pour money willy-nilly into welfare.
‘Labour needs to step back and shut up – and Keir Starmer needs to get a grip on his party.’
Doug Cheshire, a 102-year-old Royal Navy veteran who served on two battleships and an aircraft carrier in the Second World War, told the Daily Mail: ‘I think it’s a huge disgrace. To do this, they need to be pulled over the coals. If Churchill were alive, he would loot them all. The state of the Navy would remain up in the air.
‘I’m angry. I am really sad. After what we’ve been through, they need to be nailed to the wall for putting us in this difficult situation, for borrowing money from the Germans to do a job that we should be doing.’
The German Embassy this week announced that the frigate would ‘take over from HMS Dragon’ and adorn it as ‘an expression of the close German-British relationship’.
The Ministry of Defense confirmed that British sailors will use the ship to ‘exercise a leadership role’.
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He insisted that it was not unusual for a NATO group to be commanded from an allied warship and manned by Royal Navy combat personnel.
But Conservative MP and former Army officer Ben Obese-Jecty said it showed the UK had ‘apparently run out of ships’ and ‘Britannia no longer rules the waves’.
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West told the Daily Mail that our NATO allies ‘realise we are not as strong as we once were’.
He said: ‘The Royal Navy was the second strongest navy in NATO and the strongest in Europe.
‘You really can’t say that anymore. Our American allies are already looking at us and saying, ‘Oh my God, this isn’t the British we’re used to.’
The Minister of Defense took to the airwaves yesterday to defend the latest debacle.
Mr Healey told LBC’s Nick Ferrari: ‘The Germans have stepped in to supply the warships… it’s a sign of the strength of the NATO alliance.
‘But I’m not happy with our situation with British warships, because it takes six years to build a warship.’
However, when asked how many frigates he had at his disposal, Mr Healey got his figures out of whack and said incorrectly: ‘We have 17 frigates and destroyers. ‘That’s down from 23 at the end of the last Labor government.’
Actually, this figure is 13.
A Ministry of Defense spokesperson said: ‘The UK is one of the highest spenders on defense of all NATO countries and, as these figures show, our spending has increased by almost £9bn since 2023; This is a truly significant increase.
We are a leader in the alliance, fully dedicating our nuclear deterrent to NATO and providing almost all of our Armed Forces on land, in the air and at sea.
‘We are delivering the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War, investing £270bn in defense across this Parliament alone.’
