They is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, unless you believe we buy steel from the same places we buy ships.

The real answer to this is threat analysis: what are the realistic scenarios under which it becomes a problem. e.g. if Japan stops supplying ships a) how likely is that and b) could we just buy them from the Dutch instead? However, the stakes for getting this wrong are high.

If it’s sourced from abroad it has to be shipped (blockades anyone ?)

If your usual trading partner is inaccessible for reason X , what are the odds your alternate trading partner is also affected by reason X? Are there geopolitical or national political reasons that partner B might become unavailable or unpalatable at the same time?

Maybe, but it has to be balanced against the economic damage of autarkic policies which sabotages national security in its own way. There's no substitute for a case by case analysis.

I mean, if we are talking about a big war scenario, then simply the distance to Japan would mean Dutch ships are clearly the better choice.

Otherwise sure, realistic threat scenarios. But the world is also changing fast. Denmark or Canada did not expected to be militarily threatened by the US some years ago and still this is where we are now.

The sensible thing would be deep integration with a continent-spanning economy. Sure the UK is an island, but the channel isn't exactly wide (not to mention the tunnel). It's hardly Iceland - even Ireland is more detached.

But the UK decided against that in 2016, and despite demographics having shifted the views, there is no general "rejoin" campaign.

I've wondered about this too. I live in the UK and have been idly daydreaming about my next startup, and it seems like Brexit, and therefore having a small market / uncooperative EU, is such a headwind for some of the things I'd like to do. Seems like many UK startups just pretend to be based in SF.

I think rejoin is going to be politically unpopular for a while, as there's no way we could rejoin the EU on anything like as good terms as we left on.

Rejoin is polling far ahead of Brexit, which is beginning to be acknowledged as a mistake by everyone. Although not everyone agrees on the reasons.

The problem is the UK is an oligarchy owned and run by non-dom billionaires. It's essentially a floating labour camp. Virtually all the major industries are foreign-owned, and profits flow out of the country instead of being invested in infrastructure, R&D, and national development.

The public school/Oxbridge educational path is based on a 19th century view of the world, which has its roots in a feudal society that expanded into global piracy.

Rejoining the EU isn't just about undoing the direct, about exposing the population at all levels to a more modern culture with elements of social responsibility and rational state planning.

The EU isn't perfect. But Europe successfully rebuilt after WWII, while politically the UK is still stuck in the 1930s.

But that popularity (about 2:1 saying brexit was a mistake) isn't translating to political support, probably because both Labour and Tories supported Brexit.

And while the majority agree we should never have left the EU, and the majority agree we should rejoin, that isn't translating to political support.

Indeed the plurarity of votes is to Mr Brexit himself, who thanks to FPTP is likely to get a majority government in 2029 off 30% of the vote.

Hell 1 in 8 people that voted Farage last year think the UK never should have left Europe. Not that it wasn't the right type of brexit, but that it shouldn't. Yet they voted for Farage, decided that was a mistake, and are continuing to vote for Farage.

I get it. Some people just want the world to burn.

But a similar number think we should rejoin the EU, yet voted Farage last year.

It's no wonder support for democracy is at an all time low.

Support for Brexit evaporates when people realise they will have to adopt the Euro.

On day one - for past bad behaviour.

The UK is obviously too small and poor to go it alone forever. The other option for them would be economic integration with North America. They could probably join up with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on relatively favorable terms.

That's far from obvious. The UK is 3x the population of Australia, which manages fine without deep economic integrations. The problem of Brexit is not that it is impossible to go it alone as a middle power; it's just an unnecessary handicap when you border a 450m head market but want to ignore them and act like you are an island at the arse end of the world.

Austrailia is 80 times the size of the UK, it has a lot of resources - 240 times as much space per person than the UK.

The UK is too large to be an independent city state, but too small to be self sufficient.

Worth pointing out the UK has an extrememly deep and through free trade agreement with the EU, deeper than USMCA. Integration is still there, and isn't going away.

The further down the value chain you go, the simpler it is going to be to find alternative suppliers. Or alternative inputs. And figuring out which alternative inputs make sense in your situation is probably much easier if you're the ones integrating the different components. And if you are committed to building X ships a year for strategic reasons, chances are a local company will end up a globally competitive supplier by grabbing the opportunity right in front of them.

Even back during the Age of Sail when Britain was the dominant naval power with a worldwide empire, they had to import many of the inputs for their domestic shipbuilding industry. This included basic stuff like timber, tar, hemp, cotton, etc. If you have enough warships to secure your sea lines of communication then depending on imports is less of a concern. But the UK Royal Navy today is a shadow of its former self and can barely serve as a local defense force.

But weren't they mostly importing these from their own colonies? If anything, the acknowledgement of the importance of securing strategic inputs must have been a big part of the push within the governments of colonial powers for territorial expansion. I think there must not have been as much of sense at the time that you could just leave people in other parts of the world to be independent and still buy these things from them at fair prices.

If a war broke out and the UK couldn't call in NATO, then the UK is already fucked. And if they can call NATO in, then they can tap into the inputs in all NATO countries.