Sailing into imperial delusions is no way to run foreign policy
What would Jack Aubrey have made of it? When Patrick O’Brian’s fictitious Royal Navy hero sailed HMS Surprise to the far side of the world, the enemy was the USS Norfolk, a lone American frigate marauding in the Pacific. Full speed ahead from the war of 1812, to 2021, and today’s maritime sparring partners are HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s new £3bn aircraft carrier, and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army navy and its 360 “battle-force” ships.
It’s hardly an equal fight, though that would not have stopped Captain Aubrey. In any case, the government insists, slightly disingenuously, that it is not courting confrontation by parading modern-day gunboats under Beijing’s nose. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, says the aim is “fly the flag for Global Britain”. Thus do deluded Brexiters spread their foolish, neo-imperial fantasies to points as distant as the hotly contested South China Sea.