Trident is, unfortunately, a necessary evil. I doubt there's any nation that will want to nuke us right now in the world, not even the French, however that's something that could change at any point in the future. I'd love to be able to see the back of Trident, as well as all nuclear weapons, but now that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle it's just not going to happen.
In regards to the carriers, yeah, it is essentially a big exercise in chest swelling that we can barely afford. I'd say that the F-35s can be dropped and replaced with F-18s, but we've already made the carrier with a ramp on it so that scuppers that idea, unless someone wants to put RATOs on the F-18s.
I think that the two carriers, if they ever get finished, will fit in well with the French carrier, as a European defence scheme. There are still some things we have to defend after all, a certain island near Argentina for one, but yes, certainly the design and construction of the two carriers has been an exercise in how not to run a navy.
