Yet all things are relative, and looking at the sweep of major advanced economies, never mind the challenger autocracies that seek to undermine them, Britain’s position is frankly no worse than anywhere else, and in all manner of ways, actually somewhat better.
In any case, it is by no means observably true that Britain is about to tip over the cliff edge into some kind of doom loop of permanent economic debasement.
The view that it is tends to be as much instructed by culture wars as impartial economic analysis.
On the Left, it’s the sin of Brexit and 13 years of Tory misrule, and on the Right, it’s fury at the country’s descent into wokery and its supposed failure to take advantage of Brexit opportunities.
Running down the old country is a very British habit, and certainly makes good, table-thumping copy.
I should know, because I have done a fair amount of it myself. There’s also a very long tradition of it. For one of the greatest exemplars, just turn to Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Richard II, and John of Gaunt’s famous deathbed lament:
“This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself…”
Sorry, but none of today’s polemic comes close to this defining monologue of anguish and despair.
But though it has always been with us in some shape or form, where did the latest outbreak of declinism come from?
Rewind to the start of this year, and up pops the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to accuse the Conservatives of leaving the UK in a “low wage, high tax, doom-loop” that by the end of the decade would result in Britain having lower GDP per head than Poland, and eventually even Hungary and Romania.
