The escorts are not being made utterly extinct, so the corn-seed of experience is still there and their numbers can be regenerated with relatively little a-do once the finances have revived a little (ref. 'rolling review').
Our extensive carrier ops experience should be guarded from being zero-timed for the sake of short term sensibilities.
Short term? we're looking at DECADES -have you seen the mess our economy is in?
The escorts won't be forthcoming anytime short of the year 3000, anybody banking on an economic recovery that will allow HM Forces to expand back to anything like previous levels is, quite frankly, living in cloud cuckoo land. The government is actually proposing drastic cuts in social services and benefits - these are guaranteed vote losers (chopping the forces, on the other hand, is seldom a vote loser except for times of actual war).
For things to be this bad there is no way reinvestment in the forces is going to occur anytime soon. If it weren't for Afghanistan I suspect our front line would be composed entirely of CCF cadets, the ATC, and a few of the more feral boy scout troops.
So now it comes down to a simple question of which you can afford to lose - CV capability or FF/DD (and smaller). If your budget runs to 2 carriers or several dozen corvette/frigate sized vessels and you can only have one or the other for the forseeable future, then I honestly don't see how you can go for the CV option. Unless, of course, you are an Admiral and want to throw cocktail parties while Rome burns.
As for operating outside a land based air umbrella - it only works if you have a whole bunch of carriers, otherwise the loss of even a single deck reduces the TG to defensive ops.
Bah, it's all blindingly bloody obvious, does nobody read any history?
Dave