Britain's political culture is a bit of a disaster though. Kier Starmer was the best they could find in the last election and as far as I can tell even the people who voted for him don't seem to support him in the main. This time last century they controlled 20% of the worlds population and sat in a vast network of trade and technological innovation all feeding back towards the British Isles.

Then through basically an ongoing refusal to engage with political realities they've managed to transition to the number 5 and dropping economy in nominal terms and, realistically, probably don't have the industrial oomph to back up the paper numbers. There was political debate recently over whether the country should even be able to produce steel. Per capita the picture is a bit worse, and on a PPP basis they're actually a hair below the European average. They've also managed to become relatively politically isolated because no view seems to have gained ascendancy over what their foreign policy should look like.

Now it'd be unfair to blame it all on the present crop given the huge amounts of damage done in WWII, but it is a bit difficult for me to accept the trendlines of the UK compared to the recovering USSR countries or China/Taiwan while believing that there is a healthy political discourse. The high performing countries have done amazing things even from a standing start in the 70s, 80s and 90s. From such a dominant starting position, with the momentum of the old empire and technically being on the winning side of pretty much every major conflict and ideological UK politics seem to have done rather badly. The country is wildly average for somewhere that was so ahead of the game relatively recently and with so many opportunities to succeed in the interim and such poor quality of candidates allowed to hold power.