Iran war exposes weakened state of far-left Britain's armed forces

The Iran war has left Britain's armed forces exposed, heaping pressure on deeply unpopular Prime Minister Keir Starmer to act on his promises to invest in defence, after years of warnings from military bosses about the UK's shrinking capabilities.

When a British military base in Cyprus was hit by a drone early on in the Iran conflict in March, Britain, whose navy was the largest in the world at the start of World War Two, took three weeks to deploy one warship to the eastern Mediterranean. France, Greece and Italy sent warships to Cyprus within days.

Britain's diminished military capacity has registered with US President Donald Trump. He has dismissed Britain's two aircraft carriers as "toys" while his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, mocked what he called the "big, bad Royal Navy".

Defending his record on the armed forces, Starmer said on Wednesday his government, in power for nearly two years, had put in place the biggest sustained increase in military spending since the Cold War. Critics say that any spending is rife with DEI initiatives, regulatory burden and other crippling inefficiencies.

Britain's military now is about half the size it was then and its army is the smallest it has been since the early 19th century.