Unwillingness to fund a program differs from an absolute inability to afford it. Defence spending as a share of GDP and in nominal figures indicates that Britain continued to devote substantial resources to defence after the First World War. The postwar decline partly reflects demobilization and treaty choices rather than national insolvency. In this interpretation, G3 construction was a matter of policy priorities and constraints, not proof that the ships lay beyond Britain's financial capacity.
Notable Point · 1:42:28-1:49:35
The fiscal case that Britain could afford the G3s
A long budget digression challenges the claim that postwar Britain lacked the economic capacity to build the G3 battlecruisers.