Even if it were ten times that, if be surprised if it changed anybody’s mind about how essential it is.
The prime minister said the ship would reflect “the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation” post-Brexit.
“burgeoning”? I think not.
Labour’s shadow Treasury minister, Bridget Phillipson, called on the government to show “a real focus on value for money at every stage” of the project and ensure it supported jobs in UK shipyards.
You get the TV film depiction of sharp, serious, hyper competent people in immaculate suits playing 4D chess, when IRL it’ll just be these weird posh horsey inbreds bumbling into things, making fuckups and then just paying people to make the problem go away and having a quiet word with their old school chums in parliament and the press not to make a thing of it.
But the ruling classes in Britain laughed at Le Queux. They said it was just fiction - which it was. Plus he wasn’t really British and he hadn’t been to a proper school, he was far too vulgar and insistent in his patriotism. In short he was a bore.
fading into
- and MI5 was set up - created in large part by the dreams of a socially excluded novelist, and the paranoid imaginings of the readers of the Daily Mail.
is a proper Curtis “how the fuck did that last bit connect to spying? oh fuck” moment, even written down.