Alex Clarke rejects the idea that Britain's debt immediately after World War I made a G3 building program unaffordable. He distinguishes a preference for repaying debt from an inability to finance new ships, and places the much tighter post-World War II position after several intervening shocks. Those include the financial crash, the second war, and the abrupt change from Lend-Lease to ordinary economic arrangements. His comparison also treats naval wages as a smaller budget burden than they are today. The Invergordon example concerns an attempted consolidation of four pay schemes that, in his account, ultimately cost the government more.
Notable Point · 42:32-44:34
British debt and naval spending after World War I
The G3 affordability argument distinguishes immediate post-1918 debt from later fiscal shocks and the costs of naval pay reform.