Gunboats!

Gunboat diplomacy without the gunboats is how our inability to defend shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has been described. As the deliberate and not so gradual winding down of Britain’s once world-bestriding Royal Navy now shows, in stark relief, Britannia no longer rules the waves. No longer and not for some time, as the US Navy took over that role in the middle of the last century. Still we could – and did – hold up our end of the deal until relatively recently.

Now, of course, the powers are calling for an international joint task force to take control of the region, much, it can be assured, to the chagrin of the Arab powers who seek to burst free from the restraints that more, shall we say civilised, nations have applied. The region needs to be kept in check, possibly more than ever before, now that an impending nuclear dawn for islam draws nearer. But there it is, the Royal Navy is neutered, shackled and brought to heel along with the British Army and the Royal Air Force, victims of an ideology of defeat.

Meantime, civil society has been under its own siege as manners, conduct and general behaviour have been eroded to the point of near anarchy. London appears to be the stabbing capital of western Europe, overrun, it seems by lawless gangs, drug runners, people traffickers and the like, many of whom spring from the unaccounted population of what are now termed ‘irregular migrants’. Even the language has been controlled so that such meaningless terms make it nigh on impossible to call a spade a spade and thus address the recurrent theme.

That theme is decline and retreat and surrender and  beg for assistance and there is no logic to it. No logic unless, you desperately conclude, it is deliberate. But surely, it couldn’t be deliberate, could it? Britain barely contributes its commitment to NATO and it is obvious to all – serving and veteran, like myself – that even that is nowhere near enough. Events in the Gulf confirm it. We are no longer independent economically, militarily and even culturally; we have been diminished, diluted and to what purpose?

To sell the notion of supra-national governance, where no one state can exist without the help of all the others; where no actions may be taken – militarily, economically, culturally – without the consent of all the others; where no flag assumes an importance greater than the flag of the mother ship; where we are all citizens of the world and wards of state. In an earlier age this was called communism, but now they call it the EU. Those who plead to stay are those who have accepted the loss of British identity; those who are convinced that ‘progressive’ is derived from progress, when it is really spawned from helplessness.

Boris channels Churchill? He will have to.

So, tomorrow we will have a new Prime Minister and the EU rats are already deserting the government midden. If Boris has the balls he could turn this evacuation into a rout, and in the very brief window of opportunity before they try to bring down the government, he has the ability to reach out and demand more. Not from him, not from Parliament, but from us. More optimism, more hope, more determination to recover what we threw away some decades ago. If we have even the smallest glimmer of a hint of a sliver of a chance, we need to get behind Boris and push like fuck.