Rory Stewart

and it's completely astonishing.

It's basically one ship that they're all talking about called HMS Dragon, one ship.

Which is going this week.

There's one submarine, one working attack submarine, which was recently in Australia, which hopefully is beginning to steam its way back.

There's an aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, but it ain't going anywhere at the moment because we're not really sure how to defend it.

There's only one out of two of those.

We are supposed to have a non-combat evacuation ship, but that is in extended readiness in Gibraltar, and extended readiness seems to be

a spin phrase for not operating.

The last one of our four mine hunters made it back without a crew, carried by another vessel back to the UK.

That's the end of all our mine hunters.

What can we actually do in Hormuz?

We can't do any mine hunting because we don't have any mine hunters.

We can't do any civilian evacuation.

We haven't got a civilian evacuation ship.

Our single submarine is pottering over from Australia.

We hope.

We don't know.

It's under the water.

Our aircraft carrier can't move.

This thing called HMS Dragon appears to be the entire British Navy.