There was a time, albeit distant, when the Royal Navy could credibly claim to ‘rule the waves’.
On Friday, it is in danger of becoming a laughing stock, weakened by poor political leadership, chronically underfunded, and increasingly unable to protect our interests.
The sorry saga of HMS Dragon is a perfect metaphor for this decline – and our dwindling influence on the global stage.
After the Iranian drone attack on RAF Akrotiri, in Cyprus, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that this £1billion destroyer, equipped with state-of-the-art missile defence systems, would be deployed to the region to defend the base.
Three days on, she remains at anchor in Portsmouth and probably won’t reach the conflict zone for another week. Until then we must rely on French, Spanish, Greek and even Italian warships for naval cover.
This is more than a humiliation. It’s tantamount to criminal negligence. The PM had known for weeks that the US-Israeli attack was brewing and Iran‘s response could well be to attack Western interests.
So why weren’t HMS Dragon and other vessels primed and ready for action?
Issuing a statement from Downing Street on Thursday, Sir Keir was clearly a man in deep denial. Far from admitting to having been unprepared, he claimed all necessary military precautions were taken before the drone attack and that we had been in a ‘heightened state of readiness’.
HMS Dragon pictures at Portsmouth Harbour, Hampshire on March 4, 2026
Sir Keir Starmer pictured on March 4, 2026 leaving Downing Street ahead of PMQs in the House of Commons
This will come as a surprise to our allies in the Gulf and Cyprus, several of whom have expressed disappointment at our failure to help defend them against entirely predictable Iranian retaliations.
While the PM was pondering the legal niceties of military action, Tehran was bombing our friends.
Sir Keir also claimed our ‘special relationship’ with America was still working well, despite his initial refusal to allow US jets to attack Iran from British airbases and Donald Trump’s furious reaction.
But was that Sir Keir’s decision? Leaks from the National Security Council suggest he was bounced into it by Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper. If he’s reduced to taking foreign policy advice from those three political featherweights, it really is time he hung up his boots.
Perhaps the most risible thing he said on Thursday was that he is ‘providing calm, level-headed leadership’. In truth, everyone knows he’s a busted flush.
Despite visiting 29 countries in his brief tenure, he has achieved little or nothing internationally (apart from the abject surrender of the Chagos Islands).
Domestically, his policies are mired in confusion and disarray after 14 major U-turns on everything from winter fuel allowance to the two-child benefit cap.
Meanwhile, Labour’s latest brilliant plan to reduce migration is to pay failed asylum seekers up to £40,000 per family to leave the country. Why? If their claim has failed, they should surely just be removed.
No wonder the party’s support has collapsed, leaving delusional far-Left cranks such as the Greens to fill the void. It’s a rudderless ship with a calamitous captain.
True leadership is about having a set of guiding principles and keeping to them, even when the going gets tough. But after 20 months in power, does anyone really know what Sir Keir believes in, beyond a lawyerly obeisance to ‘international law’?
He loves to present himself as a statesman but in reality he is the living embodiment of one of TS Eliot’s Hollow Men: ‘Paralysed force, gesture without motion.’