The Royal Navy’s brand spanking new aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth has been deployed on its first major mission, a jolly to New York. It’s being used as a giant floating trade fair.
Surely it must be slightly humiliating that the pride and joy of the British navy is being utilized as a very large sales booth to flog trade deals that Britain can’t even cut yet, because it remains still very much inside the EU.
If the Statue of Liberty looked a little surprised this week, it could be because Britain just sailed a 65,000 ton, £3.1 billion phallic symbol up the Hudson River.
The vessel’s Captain Jerry Kyd revealed that his aircraft carrier stopped just yards from where Admiral Lord Nelson used to anchor his ships in New York, back in the century when that meant something.
For me it’s hard to imagine Lord Nelson inviting a delegation of business leaders aboard HMS Victory for a finger buffet and short slideshow on post-Brexit business opportunities.
There were plenty of military analysts who were questioning whether Britain even needed any new aircraft carriers, considering that paying for them meant the navy couldn’t then afford to pay for enough sailors to actually sail them.
The sight of HMS Queen Elizabeth off the coast of Manhattan looks to be extremely symbolic. It shows the military core which is the only thing keeping the ‘special relationship’ between the UK and USA alive.
We doubt the GB citizens are happy with the carrier, because it cost lots of money that was taken out of the health services, education and pensions. It might suppose that it’s fair exchange because the carrier will protect the riches of the British crown.
RT.com / ABC Flash Point Military News 2018.
Better not hang around the Black Sea or the South China Sea for that matter?
The only alternative for the degrated British Navy.