'anywhere on the planet' - well, it's true a carrier can't get to the centre of large land masses. But their ability to get to some bits of land has been useful in the past. Just can't think of any right now...
Oh, yes - those places in the Pacific in WW2
Oh, and Korea when there weren't any land bases
Oh, and Suez
And the Falklands....
Sierra Leone, Beira, Indonesia, etc., etc.
WW2 is over. A done deal. The Brit carriers almost saved Malaya and Singapore from falling ... but not quite.
If anyone is crazy enough to relight Korea, we'll have land bases in South Korea, but do we really want to go there? I hope not.
Suez: do we really want to start another war in the Middle East? Would the Murricanes let us attack the canal, this time?
Does anyone really think that Argentina is going to revert to a military dictatorship supported by the US?
Sierra Leone: what role would you suggest for F-35s in that bloody place?
The Beira patrol was half a century ago. It successfully contributed to the downfall of a hateful racist regime. Now look at that bloody place!
Indonesia: been a long time since Britain got involved in wars over there. Thankfully we avoided getting sucked into The American War.
Let's face it. The Blaircraft carriers are an absurd anachronism for a country which lost its empire in the 1940s.
If we want to provide aid to the Caribbean islands in the aftermath of hurricanes such as Irna and Jose, heavylift assets such as C-17s, A-400M and even the venerable Herc can shift vastly more tonnage than anything the carriers can carry. A ship which is purpose-built to support F-35s is not much use and can do little more, if anything, than an RFA in such an operation and its very existence in the area would effectively subtract at least one RFA from the equation.