Why Britain could not keep its wartime fleet in peacetime

What would Britain and Canada have needed to keep naval numbers near their wartime levels to the present?

An unsustainably large peacetime workforce and continuous construction, backed by the merchant trade and market share that historically financed British sea power rather than colonial possession alone.

Keeping Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy numbers near wartime levels would require continued construction and a workforce considered unaffordable for peacetime Britain and Canada. The figure of roughly half a million service personnel is explicitly applied to the Royal Navy alone. A panelist links this problem to the loss of empire; Alex Clarke responds that commercial trade and market share supplied the money that sustained naval power. In that interpretation, British imperial policy emphasized captured markets and strategic trading ports, while also extracting resources. The loss of merchant shipping and commercial share after the war is presented as a major economic constraint on sustaining the fleet.