The Spectator newsletter reports:

Yet last night, two former defence secretaries Sir Gavin Williamson and Sir Grant Shapps said Britain should send HMS Prince of Wales, an aircraft carrier currently stationed in Portsmouth. The carrier would take two weeks to arrive and is currently preparing for a Nato deployment in the Arctic. Yet as Williamson pointed out: ‘The current pressure is not in the Arctic… the threat is in the Gulf and in the eastern Mediterranean and we should be very rapidly redeploying forces to address that.’ Echoing his concerns, Shapps said: ‘The idea that this country can sit out a war against arguably the most evil regime on the planet is completely bonkers.’

It's not entirely clear which 'most evil regime' Shapps is talking about here: Is it the USA or Israel or perhaps Iran?

Who knows, there are so many regimes around these days that the word has largely lost its pejorative meaning.

A bit like 'democracy' and phrases like 'full-scale invasion' and 'rules-based order', which all mean diddly squat.

Let's hope that - unlike the £3.7 billion HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier - the PoW carrier can get past the Isle of Wight before breaking down and limping back to base.

Why not just send all the carrier's fighters to Akrotiri and Diego Garcia to sit there on standby in case any more schools need bombing?

At least these former defence grandees admit that 'the current pressure is not in the Arctic' - a tacit admission that all this Russian threat nonsense is just that - nonsense - (the real threat is from the USA) and sending a gunboat to anchor off Greenland to try out lots of cool arctic gear is just sabre-rattling. 

Unlike the UK, Russia has a valid interest in Arctic security having the longest border with the region at 24,000 kms, whereas the UK arctic border is - you guessed it - 0 kms.