The Daily Express notes one more significant milestone in Britain’s retreat from greatness.

She was the backbone of the taskforce that took back the Falklands from Argentina and once boasted Prince Andrew among her crew.

Now HMS Invincible is about to meet a sad end, sold for scrap on an auction website.

Her seller, the Ministry of Defence, is better described as “cash-strapped” rather than as “one careful owner”.

Launched barely 30 years ago, the 10,000 ton aircraft carrier is now just a hulk, her engines decommissioned and her pumps and generators broken.

But as one of Britain’s two flattops in 1982, the ship helped turn the tide after General Galtieri invaded the Falklands.

At the time of the invasion HMS Invincible had been earmarked for sale to Australia for £175million,

Critics claim it was that sale which emboldened Argentina to attack. It was hastily called off after the invasion.

Last month’s decision to scrap Britain’s only remaining aircraft carrier, Ark Royal, nine years before its replacement comes on line, has been criticised by admirals as having the potential to encourage Buenos Aires to again raise a claim over the islands.

HMS Invincible’s decline began in 2005 when MoD chiefs mothballed her 14 months after an extensive refit which was meant to extend her life by 10 years.

Michael Auslin says Admiral Nelson is spinning in his grave.

Imagine if someone had predicted in 1910 the loss of Britain’s position of economic leadership, the abandonment of the Empire, the complete triumph of socialism, surrender of the Royal Navy’s command of the seas, massive immigration of hostile and unproductive non-Europeans encouraged by a Labour government deliberately seeking to change the ethnic character of the British nation, and even a ban on hunting. How thoroughly and utterly destructive the impact of leftism would be could not possibly have ever been imagined.

If someone were able to travel through time and display to the population of 1910 Britain exactly what would become of the British Empire, British institutions, British liberty, and the British way of life in a century, I suspect the population would have risen en masse and slaughtered out of hand every pacifist, every socialist, every trade unionist, every Bloomsbury, and every reformer in the country.