Don't disagree with what you're saying. Only a few weeks ago I thought it made sense to buy or lease a few F-18E and wait for Gen 5 to mature. But that still involved a single boat which never made sense and a conversion cost which was dreamt up by someone on crack.
As regards navies. My (very own) opinion is that if you want to be one of the big boys you need a nuclear deterrent. If you want to be one of the big boys and relevant you need a nuclear deterrent and carriers.
£5 billion isn't that big a price tag for the carrier bit if that's what you want.
If you want to be a relevant air power you just need some decent aeroplanes - which come in at less than £37 billion for a deployable total that gets bigger than 20.
I am gradually persuaded by experts such as SSSEOWTF, ICBM etc that STOVL F-35 'ain't that bad', in fact I think it's going to be pretty special, but for the total cost of the systems involved I would have liked to see a CV capability.
So I think we're getting a reasonable capability, for which the price is high, but for a small island nation with worldwide repsonsibilities and delusions I think we're somewhere on the right lines.
I dread to think what our forces would look like if we'd bought F-15E, F-18E and a USN CVN...somewhat less dismal I would imagine.
Still, when we're not paying through the nose for Typhoon we're being quoted astronomical prices for conversions of a supposedly eminently convertible design...there is a common theme here!