Britain Will Not Be Ruling the Waves Again Under This Political Class

It was a painful wake-up call for Britain. When, last month, the United States and Israel launched an air assault against Iran, it wasn’t long before French President Emmanuel Macron announced he would be sending a powerful armada to the Eastern Mediterranean. The justification for the impressive deployment, which involves about half of France’s entire surface fleet and the country’s sole aircraft carrier, the magnificent Charles de Gaulle, was a series of Iranian drone attacks against EU member state Cyprus. Yet it wasn’t really Cyprus itself that was attacked, but the sovereign British territory of RAF Akrotiri. Nevertheless, even as Paris dispatched a potent naval force, Starmer’s Britain announced only the deployment of HMS Dragon, a Type 45 class destroyer — to add insult to injury, the British vessel malfunctioned en route to Cyprus. What is happening with the once-feared Royal Navy?

Britain was the world’s foremost naval power just a century ago. It certainly ruled the waves then. With the Middle East in flames and Britain’s own military bases in the Eastern Mediterranean under Iranian fire, London’s inability to mount a proper answer was a painful reminder of just how much its military abilities have fallen in recent decades. Indeed, as late as the 1980s, the Royal Navy still retained considerable power projection capabilities—the Falklands campaign, of course, being the most poignant example of it. Fast forward to today, and the numbers speak for themselves. In 1980, the Royal Navy had some 15 destroyers. Today, it is down to six. In 1980, the fleet had around 50 frigates in service. Today, it is down to seven. In all, the number of escorts in service fell from about 65 in 1980 to about 13 today. Underwater, the decay was just as brutal: from 28 submarines in 1980 to a shocking ten in 2026. Not once since the 17th century has Britain appeared weaker. Not since then has the country seemed less serious a military power or a geopolitical player. 

A succession of inept Conservative and Labour governments have thoroughly demilitarised Britain. Today’s Royal Navy has been reduced to a force that struggles to maintain basic levels of combat readiness. The fleet is now so small that maintenance cycles and personnel shortages leave vessels tied up at port or in the yards rather than projecting power abroad. The Queen Elizabeth Class carriers, though impressive, have been plagued by constant technical issues. And, of course, Britain’s carriers lack the necessary number of escort ships, making them highly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles in any high-intensity conflict scenario. These may be painful truths, but they are well known to most serious military commentators.

What led to this cataclysmic decay in British naval might? The Royal Navy’s current predicament is the result of decades of political complacency, strategic confusion, and fiscal short-termism. The reality is that, like elsewhere in the West, successive governments have long been treating defence as an accounting exercise rather than as a fundamental, essential, inalienable duty of the state. 

For decades, Establishment governments have forced the military to live on appallingly short budgets. Britain’s defence industrial base has been criminally decimated by the apostles of globalisation, perpetual peace, the end of history, and offshorisation. In 1970, Britain had some 7 or 8 major shipyards capable of producing military vessels for the Navy. Today, the country has only three, and their capabilities are limited: building times are now so extreme that the country’s first Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarine is only expected to be commissioned in the early 2030s, after more than 15 years of construction. The Chinese, for comparison, are launching similar vessels in 3-4 years. Indeed, China’s yards are now launching the equivalent to the entire Royal Navy every two years. These are the very real costs of the folly of Western desindustrialisation.

Nor is the problem confined to the navy. Across the armed forces, Britain is experiencing a genuine crisis. The army has been reduced to its smallest size in centuries. Estimates are that it couldn’t sustain a force larger than 10,000 men — this much was publicly stated by then-defence secretary Ben Wallace. This is baffling when one considers that Russia, at the same time, sustains a force of 700,000 soldiers in a high-intensity conflict in Ukraine. The Royal Air Force also appears to be in an appalling state. The air force, though technologically advanced, faces its own challenges in terms of fleet size, maintenance, and pilot retention. While the RAF suffers from a desperate deficit of pilots, however, young White British men were apparently being told to walk away as woke quotas were implemented that called for more women and people from ethnic minorities to gain a greater presence in the force. This is not the profile of a country prepared to defend its interests in an increasingly volatile world.

This is all happening in a dangerous context. We’re now well out of the languid days of Pax Americana. The world is not becoming safer; it is becoming more dangerous, more competitive, and more unpredictable. Great power rivalry is back with a vengeance. It will be decades before the new global disorder, as Henry Kissinger once called it, gives way to a new equilibrium. The assumption that Britain can rely on allies—chief among them the United States—to shoulder the burden of global security is becoming very tenuous, indeed. Washington’s priorities are shifting: geopolitically, its main concern is now East Asia. Today, Britain’s military weakness is not merely embarrassing; it is tangibly perilous.

Britain’s establishment has left the country toothless on the world stage. Reversing this trajectory will not be easy, nor will it be cheap. It will require a fundamental rethinking of national priorities and a willingness to make difficult choices. Defence spending must, indeed, increase—not marginally, but substantially—and it must be directed intelligently. The leftovers of Wokery that still linger must now be finally thrown in the bin. Crucially, the country must decide if it still wishes to be taken seriously on the world stage and realise that relevance and respect may have a price, but never one that is quite as high as that of weakness and dependence.