Politics is the wrong way to run a Navy

In the magisterial NAM Rodgers series (our favourite is The Wooden World btw) about the Royal Navy the point is made several times that for some centuries that navy was the largest industrial organisation on the planet. It was both civilisation and state straining to create and maintain - something that required decades of constant attention and policy to remain afloat. There’s even an insistence that being able to both plan for and carry that cost is what created the British state itself. Which is a view and no doubt there are those that would prefer to argue with it. But:

The cause of today’s malaise is a “ship gap” caused by decades of short-term thinking by politicians of all stripes, who failed to order enough new vessels and neglected key maintenance facilities, experts say.

That’s also a view and no doubt some would prefer to argue with it.

The British state was able to plan over decadal-type horizons, was shaped by the need to do so and yet modern politics has failed at exactly that task. At which point, yes, Rule Britannia, the race for dreadnoughts and bring back Jacky Fisher.

On the other hand if the British state is now incapable of that medium to long term task that brought it into existence then how much faith are we to have in the same people trying a century long plan about energy supply, or their ability to plan the size of the population, raise and educate a new generation or plan how the economy should be structured in an age of AI?

Yes, yes, in some sense this is being somewhat silly. On the other hand it is a useful question. If the state cannot do what it used to be able to do then why should we trust it on other, similar, matters which require that same skill set it observably doesn’t have?

Or, as we never tire of pointing out, a useful method of testing government promises about what they’re going to do is look at what they’re failing to do already.

Tim Worstall