US Edition
Whatever political party you belong to, it is orthodoxy now to disparage Britain: we are spineless, poor, impotent, woke, amoral, racist, politically bankrupt.
If we were once the world’s great power, it is now forbidden to refer to those days without a heavy dose of scornful irony – declinism is in, exceptionalism is firmly out.
I get it. But I’m afraid I do nonetheless feel the stirrings not only of pride in Britain but the naughty belief that we might just be, as we were (economically) in the days of naval and imperial supremacy and (morally) during World War Two, the best and most important country in the world.
With the Kremlin-admiring yellow-headed maniac in charge across the pond making America chaotic, poor and internationally unreliable, the US is over for now. Europe is, on numerous counts, a basketcase. Australia is polluted with insane levels of wokeness, and so is Canada. Israel is embattled.
Which leaves… us. We are already the leader where the all-important fight for Ukraine against Russia is concerned. And our tradition of peerless science seems to still be intact. Take, for instance, the breast cancer drug capivasertib, developed by AstraZeneca and the Institute of Cancer Research. It doubles the time a patient can live without a tumour growing and is the first drug of its kind, now available for NHS patients.
Our Armed Forces are in a parlous state, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t leading on military tech. Countries including Australia and Canada are queuing up to join Britain’s sixth-generation fighter jet programme.
Known as the Tempest, this cutting-edge piece of military hardware led by Blighty is set to feature “optional manning, an augmented-reality cockpit, ‘Loyal Wingmen’ support, and possibly directed-energy weapons and AI co-pilots”. You see? We might just be saving the world again.
Shout it out loud: Britain is still the finest country in the whole world
From supporting Ukraine to developing remarkable medical technology, there is still so much to be proud of in the UK