Returning to Charley Fortnum's initiating post from 2.5 years ago. It's all political smoke and mirrors spin. The British Army has, and has had, a permanent base in Brunei for many a year. A Gurkha infantry battalion is based there permanently. The British Army has permanent bases in Belize, Canada and Kenya, albeit the "permanent" is skeleton and proper contingents are temporary training details. Then there is the RAF base in Bahrain, the Army bases and RAF in Cyprus, the air and naval facilities on Diego Garcia, the Falklands and Gibraltar and some of the Crown Dependencies elsewhere which have a local military presence which can be argued as "British". I'm sure I've missed some too. It's not as if there wasn't and isn't already a global presence per se.
