Bernard Ingham: Let's sail back to future and launch Britannia II

If wining and dining foreign businessmen on the Queen’s personal vessel is the way to win contracts, then let’s have the blessed boat tomorrow.

It can no longer be argued – or it can’t once we make our escape from Brussels – that a royal yacht is an indulgence when we cannot make our own trade policy. In any case, the Overseas Trade Board estimated that in spite of that handicap the old royal yacht, Britannia, now a tourist attraction in the Port of Leith, in Edinburgh, helped to raise £3bn for the Treasury between 1991 and 1995.

Then in the full flush of victory in 1997 Tony Blair demonstrated Labour’s lack of business sense and innate republicanism by depriving the Queen not merely of her ship but also her refuge in any nuclear war. According to that student of contemporary history, Lord Peter Hennessy, HMY Britannia was designated as the Queen’s nuclear refuge, moving from Scottish loch to loch.

It remains a matter for conjecture What the Queen would do now if Vladimir Putin eventually lost his marbles. Perhaps a nuclear submarine has been identified as HM’s floating bunker if the need arises, which God forbid.

But I digress. To return to the case for a new royal yacht.

This newspaper’s cartoonist, Bandeira, portrays me in a perpetual state of cantankerous angst. In fact, although I say it myself, I am an old-fashioned romantic. And that is the clue to my case for a royal yacht.

For the first time in more than 350 years, thanks to Blair, the nation’s monarchy – and traders – have had to make do without a royal yacht. HMY Britannia was the 83rd in line since King Charles II took the throne in 1660.

If we are to have a monarchy – and, bearing in mind the alternative, I am a monarchist – then we ought to have a properly equipped institution, 
especially if some of the trappings of office benefit the Exchequer and jobs. Even in retirement, Britannia attracts 300,000 visitors in what ironically 
seems to be the most republican part of the UK.

I have no personal attachment to HMY Britannia, having boarded her only once – at the 1985 Bahamas Commonwealth conference.

Instead, it is what a royal yacht represents – national pride, a determination to look the part and to exhibit our values: stability, loyalty and service. And if a monarchy is about continuity and tradition, then we need to end our royal yachtless state as soon as possible.

The Treasury, looking blank at this argument, would say: “Well, yes, Ingham, it might be lovely if the Queen could be restored to the seven seas before her reign ends. But who is going to pay?”

It is at this point that I would get distinctly ratty a la Bandeira. Britain is not an impoverished nation. In global terms, it is rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Dammit, why do so many try to get here?

I fully accept that financially we are over-committed – by £70bn a year – and keeping the Royal Navy, let alone our armed forces generally, up to scratch in this high-tech world is vastly expensive.

I also acknowledge that the call on resources – and not least for the NHS and the education system if their management does not improve – is never likely to be less than severe. But, by comparison, a royal yacht would cost peanuts.

This calls for some imagination. I don’t think we can ask Blair to atone by financing a new ship out of his new wealth. His brass has too many dubious sources.

Instead, I suggest a public/private enterprise solution. The Government should launch a royal yacht fund 
whereby people like me, as the Countess of Mar has suggested, could buy a rivet. If the riveteers responded in the same 
number as Brexiteers in the referendum, we could have a new royal yacht in no time.

The ship would have to be manned by the Royal Navy. So let us institute the DM (distinguished mariner) award. If you are an exceptional seaman, a true ambassador for Britain and a head waiter, sommelier and Jeeves rolled into one, you qualify to sail in the new royal yacht. That should improve the Navy’s morale and recruitment.

That leaves the ship’s name. What’s wrong with Britannia II?