Last month, we posted that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the construction of a new national flagship intended to promote British businesses around the world. So far the proposal to replace the royal yacht Britannia, has been greeted with very little enthusiasm. Even the royal family has voiced its displeasure with the idea. 

Supporters of the new flagship argue that it would pay for itself many times over by helping secure trade deals, military contracts, and private investment in Britain. Critics consider it to be an ill-conceived boondoggle.

The royal family is said to view the yacht as “too grand” for the modern era. “It is not something we have asked for,” an unnamed senior royal source told The Times about the ship. The same newspaper also reported that the Queen herself was unenthusiastic about the plan to build a new national flagship.

The design itself has also been the subject of criticism. The New York Times quotes the naval architect who designed the Queen Mary 2 likening the proposed ship to a “1950s fishing trawler,” while a retired Navy admiral sniffed that the plans for it looked like an “oligarch’s yacht.” A Conservative Party grandee ridiculed it as a “complete waste of time, silly populist nonsense.”

“It’s a symptom,” Kenneth Clarke, a former chancellor of the Exchequer and senior figure in the Conservative Party, told the BBC. “Two hundred million pounds is not going to cause problems. But it shows there are people in No. 10 who just think there’s free money and who think that waving a Union Jack and sending yachts and aircraft carriers around the world shows what a great power we are.”