Why a land-based Tornado could not simply go to sea

Would Britain have developed a naval version of the Tornado for a surviving large-carrier fleet?

Probably not as a straightforward conversion, because carrier landing loads would require major redesign of the undercarriage and surrounding airframe.

A carrier-capable Tornado would be attractive in a British fleet that retained large decks, but the production aircraft was designed for land bases. Its undercarriage arrangement posed a problem comparable in scale with proposals to navalise Eurofighter. Altering the existing design would require changes extensive enough to amount to building a substantially new aircraft. The answer therefore distinguishes a naval aircraft developed from the outset from a late conversion of an established land-based airframe.