It's too often 'one rule for one, a different rule for the other.'
This extends to the very justification for carriers.
All sorts of capabilities (and even overall force levels) are predicated on the basis (enshrined in the defence assumptions) that we will never mount a major operation without allies or as part of a coalition.
I don't like it, but I do wonder whether we have either the money, the national will, or the political b*llocks to assume anything else.
Officially, that's why we don't need the kind of air force we had when we participated in Granby (31 frontline fast jet squadrons, including 39/1 PRU, compared to just 13 today!). In shrinking to meet the requirements of this new reality the RAF's frontline has contracted more dramatically, in a shorter time, than the Royal Navy (measured by frontline surface fleet ships) did, and yet faces further shrinkage to pay for these carriers.
And yet the CVF adherents argue for their cause based on the idea that we may one day 'go it alone' in some major operation, and insist that we are supposed to fund such a remote eventuality (something for which there has been no essential NEED since '82), while cutting the core capabilities that we need every single time we go on ops, whether with an ally, coalition or alone.
Why should the RN alone not have to cut its coat according to the cloth outlined in the defence assumptions? Especially when what it proposes will cost so much that it will dramatically distort force levels and force structure across the remainder of the board.
And make no mistake, the money about to be spent on carriers and JSF could fund a dramatic increase in those workaday capabilities and equipment areas that we need and use all the time - SH, tankers, Nimrod R replacement, PR9 replacement, FJ squadrons etc. Funding these instead would increase our useable combat power (and thus our influence) and reduce overstretch.
But no, we're a maritime island nation, the heirs to Raleigh, Drake, Nelson and the rest, and so we need a blue water navy that can boldly go and project power across the globe, independent of any allies, even if paying for it bankrupts us, and means that we can't afford the capabilities that we actually need and use all the time. Unlike Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia we need strike carriers, and apparently they are worth any sacrifice elsewhere in the defence budget.
In an ideal world, I'd want the kind of forces that would allow us to do exactly that, and to be able to do another Suez (without relying on France and Israel), with half a dozen carriers, fleets of bombers, and the ability to drop paras in brigade strength, all the while with a nuclear deterrent consisting of SLBMs, cruise missiles, and a stand off air launched weapon. But such an ambition is as unrealistic as the delusion that we can or should afford CV(F). That's simply no longer the world that Britain inhabits.