"I would have thought that the loss of 3 anti-aircraft destroyers, three general purpose frigates, 20% of our mine clearing capacity was probably enough?"
No, it's not. That doesn't dent the cost of CVF, the ongoing cost of supporting four SSBNs or an irrelevant strategic deterrent.
We no longer need (nor can we affford) a balanced ocean going navy capable of handling any level of operation autonomously. We merely need to be able to make a useful contribution to very large scale coalition operations and to be able to undertake more modest ops on our own. The same is true for the Army and the RAF.
The Falklands campaign was mounted 24 years ago. That's ancient history. Ten years before the Cold War ended.
24 years before the Falklands we were recovering from Suez, when we could still mount a major amphibious op, and simultaneously drop paras in brigade strength, while mounting an air campaign that made Granby look pathetic.
It would be nice if we still had those capabilities. We don't.
No-one is pretending that losing SHar is ideal, nor that if budgets were unlimited we would not retain it. But budgets aren't unlimited, and I'm not hearing any great clamour for a return to the levels of taxation that would be required to fund Cold War levels of force structure.
We're being forced to make hard choices, and we are losing capabilities and force levels are being cut.
But losing the SHar is less painful than losing the Jag or the PR9, or than losing the F3's SEAD capabilities, or than suffering an even longer wait for tankers.