We don’t have enough boats to even protect tankers in a relatively narrow strip of water.
Indeed we don’t.
Unfortunately the UK has very much swallowed the “technology will solve all” pill, whereas often it’s still very much boots on the ground (or in this case, in boats) that is required.
It’s all well and good having a slack handful of Type 45 Destroyers, but when your foe arrives in many, small, fast attack boats rather than by air, then it could be argued that a fleet air defence vessel is a bit unwieldy.
Unfortunately Admirals, Generals and Air Marshalls seem to repeatedly push procurement teams to buy for the conflicts they ‘want’ rather than the ones they’re likely to have.
There was a time not so long ago when the RN had a fairly sizable mine sweeping fleet based in the Gulf, which when it wasn’t mine sweeping proved quite useful for escorting civil vessels.