Irma shows us we need a strong Navy

It might be hard to believe, but this is officially the “Year of the Navy”. In January, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary said: “2017 is the start of a new era of maritime power, projecting Britain’s influence globally and delivering security at home.” And yet Britain’s response to Hurricane Irma is hampered by the state of the Navy. The arrival in the Caribbean of HMS Ocean has been delayed by ongoing engine problems, and the Navy’s ability to send a replacement has been undermined by the fact that it can only put five of its 19-strong fleet of frigates and destroyers to sea at any one time.

In 1945, there were almost 900 ships in the Royal Navy. The reduction in the size of our fleet was inevitable given the end of empire and the close of the Cold War – but Britain’s strategic position is in fact largely unchanged. The UK is an island; its Navy was constructed in part to defend trade. And as Brexit redirects our attention away from Europe and towards the wider world, so we still need a strong presence on the seas. On top of that, Hurricane Irma was a reminder that Britain still has overseas territories for which it must provide security. If it does not, the UK becomes little more than an absentee landlord.

And yet Westminster remains strangely hostile to the needs of the military. The country is still feeling the effects of the 2010 Strategic Defence Review. It is good to be prudent; sometimes the Armed Forces have to cut their cloth to suit the true needs of the age and what the voters can afford. But the 2010 review was dictated entirely by the whim of the Treasury, which slashed funding at the same time as it committed Britain to spending billions more on foreign aid. Since then, the real world has come knocking. Involvement in Libya and Syria showed that Britain couldn’t walk away from its international commitments. Nato’s target of spending two per cent of GDP on defence encouraged the Government to up its game, although reaching that target has involved some colourful accounting.

The 2015 review was an improvement, but the problems with HMS Ocean, which itself is scheduled to be decommissioned, have exposed just how vulnerable we really are. To scrimp on defence now is to defer costs until later or, worse, to walk away from Britain’s responsibilities altogether. When it is joked that the Royal Navy has more admirals than ships, the joke is very much on us.