I agree with your points on carriers... In Somalia we might make use of friendly neighbours (or at least neighbours who might grudgingly not notice a small det) and in Yemen we almost certainly would, but who knows about elsewhere. Even with HNS, I agree carriers would be helpful, and without it essential. Carriers make sense to me and having a reasonable chunk of the UK's FJs able to operate off them would seem sensible too.
My point was more that sizing air (and sea) capabilities based upon everything existing to support a land deployment was a bit blinkered (perhaps deliberately so in MoD). I picked the Yemen/Somalia scenario to illustrate that point and in that particular context I think Typhoons for speed and reach (with Reapers for persistence) would still prove more useful than infantry. That's not to say carrier-capable ac would not be as good or better, but I'll leave that to another thread!