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    This sounds like it could be a re-run of the situation prior to the Falklands. John Nott was proposing to emasculate the Royal Navy, with all the ships that made the Falklands victory possible due to be sold off. The aircraft carriers, the landing ships, and a mass of escorts were all due for the chop, plus of course the Falklands guard ship HMS Endurance.

    Keith Speed was Navy Minister and opposed these cuts vehemently. He was sacked by Mrs Thatcher for refusing to resign. Liam Fox seems to be in much the same position. The two new carriers look on particularly dodgy ground. Labour can usually be trusted to see big warships through to fruition for purely political purposes as the shipbuilding constituencies are big Labour voters. Not so the Tories but the first of the carriers is hopefully too far advanced to be cancelled. Not impossible though, bearing in mind the Labour government in 1965 scrapping the most advanced aircraft of its day, the TSR2, and having those aircraft already completed demolished and the production rigs and blueprints destroyed to eliminate any possibility of the programme being resurrected by the Tories.

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