La HMS Prince of Wales ha dato un preavviso di cinque giorni per salpare in risposta alla crisi in Medio Oriente

ffs. This is the thing though, as legit as some of the issues are over there with hamas, hezbollah and iran.

can the israelis just not deal with it without causing massive humanitarian crises that drags everyone in and fucks us all up? No, they seemingly can’t

Clearly we’ve made our bed so we have to lie in it, but does anyone else constantly think whenever you look at these carriers, what a giant mistake these ships were?

UK could have had 3 or more Izumo sized B carriers for deployment flexibility since neither of these carriers have anywhere near their full complement of B’s onboard and they won’t for possibly decades. Or, and this would have been a prestige reduction but maybe more rightsized for what the UK actually is nowadays, 2 of *those* and an actually useful number of 45’s.

Or two proper catobar carriers – in that case if we still needed 4th gen to bulk up the complement, Rafales could have been an option. But now we have *some* B’s, we can’t afford to pivot I assume.

The QE’s seem like the worst of both worlds.

I am a little bit worried about our only viable ballistic missile defence systems being sent far far away.

Not very worried, but I hope it’s been considered.

This entire war has shown Starmer is either the most naive PM this country has ever had or the most incompetent

He is either naive for believing Trump, a well known liar, that negotiations with Iran were going well even as the US was very clearly continuing its largest military build up since the Iraq invasion and even as servicemen and women in the UK were reporting the American garrisons in the UK were very obviously preparing for war

Or he is the incompetent for purposely not sending everything we had to the region as the French were already doing because he genuinely thought that if the UK stood back with its hands up saying “We have no part in this and we aren’t letting the US use out bases” it would persuade Iran, a country which has been very vocal in its hostility towards us and which our own security services have confirmed have tried to launch no less than 20 terror attacks on us, would leave us be

The consequences of this war for the UK as a direct result of Starmer actions even without our involvement are the following –

– The Royal Navy are now being attacked as a laughing stock because they appeared to not be ready for what was obviously going to be a war and this cannot even be explained away as “Tory budget cuts” as we actually do have ships and they were all in the wrong place

– Cyprus after being successfully attacked unprovoked by Iran is demanding a re-evaluation of their military treaty with the UK after this war with the possibility that our RAF base on the island may be taken from us and given to another country such as the US or France who have come to their aid quickly

– The special relationship has been fractured with this appearing to be the final nail in the coffin for Trump and regardless of your political opinion of Trump it is clear that the damage to the special relationship has been done for no reason now given that Starmer has already U-Turned on his original position and gave the Americans what we could have given them from the beginning which was limited usage of our airbases for defensive purposes

– Starmers political opponents are capitalising on his weakness and instead of trying to offer up explanations to appease people as to how this all happened Starmer is instead just resorting to accusations that anyone not agreeing with him is just an opportunist saying they want to support the US for political points purely because it’s the opposite of the government even though the Conservatives position on Iran has been consistent for years and the Conservatives supported the Iraq war when Labour called for it