Can empty vessels keep Brown afloat?

When Britain ruled the waves the nation's spirits would have soared at the news that the Royal Navy was acquiring two new aircraft carriers: embodiments of our oceanic power.

Nowadays we ask, somewhat irritably, what in God's name are they for? Wouldn't the money be better spent improving the NHS, schools, hospitals etc.

The truth is we are no longer a martial nation. Once upon a time it was our delight in the nation's hegemonic power, that bound us all - rich and poor, Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English - together. Sadly that consolidating pride has evaporated.

Which is just as well as we no longer have a ruling class trained from birth to immerse themselves, by travel and reading, in geo-politics and the history thereof.

The great early 20th century Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, for example, spent 10 years in the Levant, learning the languages, before entering politics; as did

Disraeli. What a contrast with the present bunch of geo-political ignoramuses - Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman, Ed Balls, David Miliband and even Gordon Brown himself ­ whose knowledge does not extend far beyond economics, sociology and public relations.

Nor, sadly, is the Royal Navy what it once was, as we discovered only a few months ago from that degrading Iranian fiasco in which all ranks demonstrated an amateurishness and craven incompetence which, in the old days, would have landed the admiral responsible before a firing squad on his quarter-deck, like Admiral Byng.

Unemployment is another matter. On that subject the new bunch undoubtedly are great experts, knowing exactly the value in votes of the two new aircraft carriers in the forthcoming election in Glasgow East. Govan and its shipyards, that is what our new great warships are for.