“Armchair general” as political row continues over future of the Royal Navy's world standing

The political row comes as the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon is loading supplies needed after she was tasked with helping to protect our troops after RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus was hit by a drone as the Iran-US conflict continues.

Today, she is the Portsmouth Upper Harbour Ammunition Facility and, according to tomorrow’s shipping movements, she is due to be moved to BOWS S berth in the afternoon. The Royal Navy has said that she will depart some time this week after it originally announced the deployment on March 3.

But now the delays have sparked a heated exchange between the Conservatives and Labour over the reasons for the delays, and Britain's position on the world stage.

Conservative shadow minister James Cartlidge said: “Despite the Secretary of State just saying, and I quote, ‘Since January he has been moving military assets to the region’, there isn’t a single Royal Navy warship present, and our Type 45 HMS Dragon hasn’t even set sail.”

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He added: “Last week the Cypriot foreign minister said, and I quote, ‘There are questions about the future of the UK’s military bases on the island’.

“Isn’t the reality that Greece, France and Spain are all sending ships and that Labour’s failure to deploy the Royal Navy to the eastern Mediterranean has completely undermined our international standing, not just in the eyes of our many allies in the Middle East, but also in the eyes of those who can now exploit such weakness?”

Defence Secretary John Healey replied by calling Mr Cartlidge an “armchair general”.

Mr Healey said: “While we have been building up that significant military presence in the Middle East since January, which he, for the first time, has recognised and welcomed, it is totally right that as circumstances change, so should our military posture.”

He criticised the Conservatives’ record in government with the Royal Navy and added: “We only have HMS Dragon available to go to the Middle East today because the Labour Government commissioned it before 2010.”

The Royal navy currently has 60 ships in its fleet, with building work underway on a new generation of warships. However critics point to decades of underspending by successive governments contributing to the current issues within the Royal Navy which means that half of its six Type 45 destroyers are in refit, one just completing a ‘regeneration’ and the other in need of work.