Fisher turns treaty limits into a public political battle

Fisher is unlikely to accept the Second London Naval Treaty's 14-inch gun limit or its restrictions on individual ships. Beginning under Ramsay MacDonald's premiership, he could connect treaty constraints to unemployment, closed yards, and national danger in repeated conversations with trade-union leaders, press proprietors, and potential allies such as Winston Churchill. His public style would make naval limitation a domestic political battle rather than a technical negotiation inside government. The likely result is either no Second London agreement or an early renegotiation that leaves designers far more freedom. Even a formally surviving treaty would have to accommodate a Controller who regarded a constrained 27,000-ton design as an invitation to demand something larger.