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Not so slowly. They've gone from a more or less respectable smaller country to more or less politically, culturally, and economically irrelevant in less than 10 years. I even question whether it's rational to allow them to have nukes; they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.

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Their cultural decline seems to have definitely accelerated recently. Even 10-15 years ago it seemed like there was so much more British influence in the media, a lot more films and television set in Britain. It seems like the London Olympics were a kind of last hurrah. Even here in Australia which has always historically had more British influence than anywhere else it's receded - there's very little focus on their internal politics, much more on the politics and culture of the United States, even more than you'd expect given the population difference.

The genteel class turning on jk Rowling was definitely a Waterloo moment in British cultural strength.

It's deliberate isolationism, the same isolationism that drove Brexit

There are two kinds of "isolationism". In the first, the person becomes a hermit refusing to interact with anyone.

In the second, a cult grabs hold of the person and isolates them from their families and loved ones so they can brainfuck them. And, I suspect this has happened to the UK. England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah. And the English can't be allowed to talk with anyone else or they might realize how fucked-in-the-head all that nonsense is. They are under the spell of a cult, not as individuals, but collectively. And that cult won't be done with them until it's taken everything from them and coerced them to sign a "billion year contract". And to top it off, you're blaming it on them.

Don't mistake Brits' general disinterest in engaging with foreigners whose perspective on the UK begins and ends with lecturing us on "England for the English" with us not being able to talk with anybody else...

Oh look! It's the Monty Python "Ahm not dead yet" skit, out in the wild...

it's ironic though, that you wrote your comment in English.

That is only historic influence, though. Britain does not control the English language and cannot exert any further influence through it.

Well, Monthy Python does still reach some people, but apart from that it is fading away it seems ..

It has profound foundational influence that continues to this day.

Also, England doesn't need to do anything to ensure that influence of English culture is maintained in the US either.

For as long as we still speak the English language, English culture will continue to live "rent free" in our heads, and that's not going away anytime soon.

This is often cited as a "soft power".

Yeah, but whose English?

I think you meant,

"but whom's English"

The lingua franca has changed before...

It's irrational to allow anyone other than yourself to have nukes. That's the whole point of having them, and the reason why nobody is going to bother asking for permission. No country with any self respect wants to end up becoming another Venezuela.

Did it work out better for North Korea or Iran?

North Korea is still standing and even got Trump to play diplomacy. Only reason Iran got attacked is the fact they didn't have nukes yet.

Venezuela showed everyone what happens when you're a toothless country. USA shows up at your door uninvited, fucks your shit up, takes your oil and kidnaps your president for good measure, just to tack on some extra humiliation.

Don't get me wrong, Maduro deserved an even worse fate than what he got. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It's still a cautionary tale for nations worldwide. It can happen to you. China continues to erode the economic power of the USA. They could very well discover one day that their military might is all they have left. Who's to say they won't suddenly decide to capitalize on their advantage before it evaporates?

As Venezuelan nothing angers me more than someone naming Maduro as our president, and that in some way I should feel bad about it. The guy and his government were pure evil.

You guys should have been the ones to personally get your hands on him. Hope you're doing alright now. Situation is far from perfect but at least one tyrant is gone.

We have tried so many times, and tbh if Venezuelans were the ones doing it this time so many civilians would have died. Because the military people that can do something about it, are so comfortable with all the stuff they have.

Yes Maduro and his cronies are pure evil. But it's not another country business to intervene, kidnap or assassinate leaders.

It should be UNSC acting on the arrest warrant from Den Haag sending the president snatchers, but that version of world police didn’t live up to expectations, so back to big shaitan ut goes

Every country has the president they deserve. You had Maduro because you didn’t oppose him.

IF he had played ball with the US they would have left him in charge no matter what he did to the population.

No one should feel bad for Maduro, but the reasons Maduro was evil had very little to do with the actual reasons the US grabbed him. Trump's motives were pure greed, and that's a terrifying reason for kidnapping a foreign head of state. And at least as far as I've seen, it didn't even help. Literally every other part of his regime is still in place isn't it?

Nicaragua and Cuba next

Iran would be attacked even with nukes. If you promise relentless war- and nuclear attacks via proxxies - you basically show that game-theory does not apply to you. Religion explicitly states that MAD does not apply to them too. And they life by that. So Iran with nukes, would be nuked 1 day after. No matter the cost. Its similar to the a medieval pope having nukes, and everyone else being heretic witches. You just pick the size of the stake you burn on at that point.

What the west wishes the world to be and how they think everyone does see the world, does simply not apply. No matter how Nash pure. The All defector defects in all games..

This US regime isn't any different than the ayatollah, they also want christian sharia laws and to oppress women.

I wish you had traveled the world and would have seen whats really on the ground, instead of staying in your bubble and earlying out with a "everyone is just like me".

The us is the most harmless empire that ever was. The most extreme case in the us evangelical bullshit is a daily buisness case.

How it currently is and what the people currently in power wants can be different things right?

Literal neo-nazis have existed within the administration at relatively high levels (and likely still do, though they've gotten better about not outright bragging about it like some of those dipshits). People at even higher levels talk about conversations with literal neo-nazis, how they listen to their podcasts, etc. I'm not using this in the "I think everyone that has even remotely fascist tendencies is a neo-nazi" manner, I am using it in the "No these people are literally self described neo-nazis" manner.

The reality of the USA post WW2 is one that is full of plenty of shame. It still might be the most harmless empire there ever was, but that's a relative statement - the US has done * a lot* of harm. Perhaps a lot of good, too. Maybe even more good than harm. But almost all of that harm was unnecessary. But the past is not the future, and the present shows us marching to a darker and darker future.

Better to raise the alarm now and stop that descent rather than letting it continue.

Yes and now, go out of your bubble - and ask the immigrants streaming to the us- what do you think compared to home! And the answers is- at home they where all nazis, insane ideollougs with corrupt clans, all fanatics, buisness had no say and they hunted minorities in the streets. Thats why i left.. thats why they all leave iran, etc when they can.

They wouldn't if the us was this bad even now. Reality itself contradicts you..

The moment migration to the us stops- its finally become equally bad..

The UK has been declining for at least 50 years, it isn't a new phenomenon. It's only really relevant culturally; after all EU countries are forced to speak English or they wouldn't be able to communicate, even after the UK's departure from the Union and some unsuccessful attempts at increasing the place of French.

While it's the defacto public language (and the one of the required languages). These days all EU communication is done though either the translation service or governmental variants of it making it pretty much irrelevant due to most official languages being served (there seem to be some exceptions but they are minor in the grand scheme of things).

Not having the UK in the EU makes English a better choice, not a worse one. It was one of those things where the UK had a 'home court advantage'. This is one of the strangest fringe benefits and of course there were some countries that tried to jockey for position but fortunately that didn't go anywhere.

And hey, now that the UK exited stage right, Ireland gets to be the de-facto owner of the English language in the EU :D

The benefits keep stacking up!

Joking aside, that was one of the worst own goals in history.

OK, I can see how you can call UK irrelevant, but unstable? Currently it looks much more stable that the major nuclear powers of US and Russia.

The thing about an independent nuclear deterrent is that it’s completely irrelevant what anyone else thinks about you having one.

"allow"? Under what authority and governance would you remove them?

American exceptionalism is a law unto itself.

Not that I necessarily disagree but rationality doesn't enter into it. I mean Pakistan is probably less stable than the UK but I guess they're allowed to have nukes now?

> I mean Pakistan is probably less stable than the UK but I guess they're allowed to have nukes now?

Is there a nuke authority that I did not know about who decides who should and should not have nukes?

Do you mean the International Atomic Energy Agency?

> some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.

Which country do you believe could possibly qualify for such an impossible task?

China's probably making the best argument for it now.

China's wot?

I don't personally like their government but at this point they certainly have the appearance of long term social and political stability. More than most western countries for the time being.

Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to invading Taiwan.

Would the us currently defend Taiwan? I think they might get the chance to just take it, especially if we get another president like Trump in 28.

If Japan became involved would the US then become embroiled?

Yes obviously. We would erase President Xi and his family as well. What are they going to do, cross the Pacific? Our total willingness to do is unconditional.

No idea, honestly. But if I lived in Taiwan I would be shitting bricks.

Taiwan's biggest problem is that the average age is currently ~45 and in 15 years it will be ~55. It's going to be hard to keep the economy going once half the country's retired.

A dramatic end to his reign doesn't have to imply social or political instability (though it certainly could).

> they certainly have the appearance of long term social and political stability

You could've said that exact same thing about the US just 10 years ago when Obama was president.

The only real difference between Obama's foreign adventures in Libya and Trump's in Iran was that Obama lied to the security council to get their approval first.

Trump isnt all that different in character to previous administrations he just takes bigger risks and doesnt bother with the mask.

The person I was replying to was talking about China's own long-term social and political stability, not their foreign policy. If you're suggesting that Obama's boondoggle in Libya was the catalyst that led to Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and Trump's first presidency, that's intriguing speculation. But I don't think his foreign policy is relevant to the overall topic since it was largely milquetoast for the American public at the time, and certainly didn't cause any immediate domestic instability like we're seeing with Trump.

China has a host of factors that make their current system very fragile. I doubt they make it five more years before turbulence hits.

I'd be interested to read about that if you have any particular pointers to resources to share.

I've been hearing that since the 1990's when it first started to become apparent that their economy was on track to overtake the rest of the world within a few decades.

It hasn't happened yet. Is there something you perceive as especially problematic now, as opposed to the last 30 years?

They'll likely skate over the current turbulence that's already hitting many non-China countries.

China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now

  As other Asian economies race to conserve energy, China has huge reserves of oil and gas as well as alternative energy sources like wind and solar

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/20/china-oil-rese...

Been hearing that said repeatedly since 1989.

I've never once heard it from somebody who correctly anticipated China's rise though. The imminent collapse story just quietly changes every 5 years or so.

If the US has an imperial rival one thing you can almost guarantee is that the predictions of economic collapse will be as frequent as they are absurdly overblown and as always, This Time It's Different.

Look, if Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan continue to predict China will fall for long enough, someday they'll be right. Maybe. Probably.

That's true, but the one child policy has backed them into a corner.

A society that is unwilling to replace itself will inevitably decline.

> the one child policy has backed them into a corner

A policy that ended a decade ago, and was only ever marginally successful (even at the height of the restrictions their birth rate was nearer 1.4 than 1.0)

The one child policy was only for cities anyway. Agricultural areas were permitted, even encouraged, to have more children. There were other exceptions, like twins (obviously), if the first baby was disabled, etc. Later on, couples were allowed two children if both parents came from single-child families.

The policy in place for 36 years, that ended 11 years ago had pros and cons, but it hasn't backed them into a corner of inevitable decline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

> Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to

That’s a pretty big aside.

Not sure why you replied over here, but yeah, it sure is. Just trying to be clear about separating the moral judgement from the prediction.

Nesting.

One or more of the Nordics.

At first I took the comment about transferring nukes as a bit of a joke, but you make a fair point. Let Iceland have em!

Greenland can make a competing bid on the basis of a pressing need.

That's one that I didn't have on my bingo card for 2026 but it is funny to contemplate.

So, Sweden.

They're also starting to talk about a joint nuclear program.

As they should be

> economically irrelevant in less than 10 years

The UK has the 6th highest GDP in the world. Pretty high bar if that make you economically irrelevant.

That's mostly because of London's financial center, where a lot of foreign money is laundered; the city's GDP is comparable in size with small EU countries like Belgium or Ireland. If you take London out of the equation, what's left has an average GDP of only 30k per capita [0].

A quick comparison with [1] (using 1 GBP ~ 1.30 USD) shows that London would rank #8 in Europe (between Denmark and Norway), while the rest of the UK would come in somewhere around #25, between Spain and Italy.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1168072/uk-gdp-per-head-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...

Sure, if you exclude the wealthiest parts of the country then it does look significantly poorer. Just as if you exclude California then the GDP of the US drops significantly. The point was whether the UK is economically relevant, not whether the economy is ethically sound (which is quite a nebulous question I'm sure you'll agree).

This is an entirely delusional twitter-brain take.

Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, a cultural powerhouse (how many Hollywood actors are British?), with a lot of soft power, a capable and currently renewed nuclear arsenal (Astraea and Dreadnought are on track), a globe-spanning network of alliances (from AUKUS to Japan deploying to the UK first time in their history to being one of the closest and most unwavering allies for Ukraine), and a constitutionally healthy and adaptive system of government (we just passed another constitutional change and it's not a big deal, we can just do that).

Frankly, this meme stinks of projection. Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement. I guess projecting this free fall on the UK makes living through it more bearable.

>Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, ... Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement.

Why would you use the economy to defend the UK's status and then point to a bunch of non economy stuff to try to knock the US? The US is the largest and has been for awhile. Isn't that what mattered to you? Plus, pointing out that a bunch of prominent UK residents leave to participate in US industry hardly seems a point in favor of how well the UK is doing.

It's not "knocking the US", it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline. The size of the economy is an example of why "irrelevant" is delusional. Two different points.

The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives in London, despite constantly starring in Hollywood films. It's an example of the UK culturally punching way above its weight in proportion to its population.

> it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline

Again, you just used the present size of a nation's economy to argue that a nation isn't in decline when someone was talking about the ongoing decline of a nations politics, economy, and culture. It seems odd to me you're able to, for other countries, understand that the present moment can be viewed with both historical and likely future context.

>The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives...

Plenty move, but that wasn't the point I think anyone was making. If I wanted to say they were moving to the US, I would have said that instead of "leave to participate in US industry". And all of that ignores that the original commenter was talking about the decline of British media rather than saying that they're aren't talented Brits. It's not like they they're saying the UK had a bunch of great actors ten years ago and they suddenly died. Them working in American industry rather than the UK producing it own is, I'm pretty sure, the sort of point the commenter you replied to was making.

> more or less politically, culturally, and economically irrelevant

I feel like we're reading different posts.

They didn't put it very well but they're right that being the 6th largest economy, and likely to become the 5th or 4th quite soon puts a hole in the "economically irrelevant" accusation.

The UK used to be the 4th largest economy [0] so being 6th is still indicative of decline.

[0] https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizatio...

Is it indicative of "economic irrelevance"?

Kinda. It's a single-digit percentage of just the US and China, clustered with a lot of other countries of roughly the same size [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Just to be clear you're saying only the top 2 countries by GDP are "economically relevant"?

I think they’re saying they used to be one of the big boys. Now they’re just a regular boy.

When was the UK last in the top 2 countries globally by GDP? Certainly pre-WW2?

They're still in the same cluster of countries by GDP as the #3 country so falling from #4 to #6 doesn't look so drastic.

Weird, America usually goes "Regular, Big, Mega, King Size, Super Size, etc.", not the other way round!

True, but the the UK has under 30% of the population of the US and less than 6% of the population of China.

If you compare per capita, it's a very different story. USA is around $93k, UK $61k and China $15k. So about 2/3 of the USA's and more than 4x China's. This was using my figures calculated from your table and the population figures I found elsewhere.

An actual source of GDP per capita [0] puts the USA at 9th globally, UK at 20th globally and China at 74th.

When you factor in that the US's GDP figures are quite skewed because there are lots of multinationals headquartered in the US. If you ignored just the Mag7, who all derive the majority of their income outside the USA, the USA would be significantly further down that GDP list.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

The Yanks see in the UK their own inevitable decline. The British Empire disappeared, and every time they turn on the TV and see their retarded paedophile in chief struggling to express even one single coherent thought, they must surely know they are witnessing the end of their own empire.

They're just lashing out, emperor has no clothes, their empire is collapsing, and those who are paying any attention at all, are fully aware of it. All they have left is to go on the internet and shit on Europe for daring to regulate their precious social media companies (that elsewhere they generally admit we would be better off without). They are desperately clutching onto this tech-company-based nationalism. It's absolutely pathetic.

It’s kind of sad to read your arrogant and xenophobic rantings. I’m not sure you’re really down for the sort of inclusive and open minded discussion that normally takes place here.

Living here the decline is tangible. And this is West Oxfordshire; not one of the poorer parts of the country.

An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes. Our rent-seeking privatized water company effected the minimum repair required by regulation.

The next section of old pipe burst almost immediately, flooding the road further for most of January, utterly destroying the surface, through the road base in many places. Even at a crawl it's difficult to avoid tyre damage.

Over a month later the water repairs were effected. Then shortly after some local roadwork notification signs were put up.

Those expecting repairs to the moonscaped road were disappointed: instead the relentless bureaucracy of British local government installed traffic calming measures on top of the broken road, as the work had already been booked and could not be stopped by any means as even basic roadworks lack any degree of dynamism in their execution.

All this still needs to be made right. These small scale failures will compound and compound until the entire state is drowned in the consequence of its incompetence.

We need to recognise the difference between the GP rant and what you're describing. The austerity is undeniably still reverberating through the country. It will take years for this ship to turn around, although it is being turned around. For example, in just about a month we're getting European-style rents with the Renter's Rights Act, which is transformational. We can and should do better, and everyone can contribute to solving those issues, but after a decade of nothing the necessary changes are finally being implemented.

But the rant is entirely counterfactual. Britain is a very rich country with beautiful and recovering nature, a healthy and educated population, one of the more capable armies in Europe, a functioning deterrent, and a relatively healthy political system. We just got two new parties becoming credible threats to the "main" two (regardless of the parties' views, the political competition itself is a much healthier situation than the American duopoly)! We just abolished hereditary peers, which is a constitutional change (and it can just be done)! Below the everyday media noise, we're doing alright as a democracy.

The UK is still a respected "brand" in most of the world despite what chronically online people say. British education is the most sought-after in many countries for example.

It's important to realise that the US is full of fascists obsessed with the perceived decline of Europe. They love to shit on Europe. I think it's about distracting themselves from the abject moral, political and economic failure of voting for Trump twice.

> An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes

Your example only compares against the UK past.

It has zero relevancy because it says nothing about relative change against other countries.

Anecdotally for the USA, I went to New Orleans last year, and I was stunned at the rotting infrastructure. Coming from New Zealand, the USA seems to be trying to copy the trajectory of Argentina.

Then again, I see serious problems in my hometown (e.g. sewage treatment plant) and country (e.g. big problems with rail, ferry, air, electricity, 3 waters). Apart from the societal issues that it seems all countries are facing.

I was in New Orleans last year and everything looked brand new. The whole city was basically rebuilt 15 years ago.

I know what a rebuilt city looks like, because I come from one. Hurricane Katrina was 2005. Christchurch Earthquake was 2011. In my opinion, my home town has recovered better and faster from destruction than New Orleans has.

I also live within a floodzone. There is a high probability I will learn how we deal with flooding in the future (different flooding - shallower and lacking the winds and hopefully better pre-planning for avoiding harm).

> everything looked brand new

Absolutely not, to me.

And the conversation is regarding infrastructure. A bunch of Christchurch infrastructure is brand new.

New Orleans in particular is highly variable in what you see, depending where you visit.

Fyi, large states in the US routinely have rolling blackouts and brownouts.

Texas, California (the richest state lmao), Puerto Rico, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi etc

Fyi, this is not true. California has them but they are not routine, and are a function of internal political dysfunction that is quite unique to California. The grid here is still extremely fragile, and vulnerable to e.g. cyberattack and other disasters, but let's not get carried away.

California at least only has blackouts when pge causes another fire.

I would normally agree but if you see Brexit and the kind of "people" that are getting ready to take over power (Reform UK), I do have to say I understand some of this sentiment.

I mean the US have nukes and they’re hardly stable and predictable.

Allow them to have nukes, who are you lol

>who are you lol

The US.

Who else on the planet would have the effective power to possibly even think about who should and shouldn't have them, while plausibly being able to do anything about it?

Probably a country that has done so in the past, like the UK…

Given how the situations w.r.t Ukraine & Iran escalated, the US is the only country that has specifically and publicly demonstrated it's inability on both counts.

We can't give Ukraine their nukes back because they were decommissioned (and they were rotting at the time), but there'd be no nation more deserving.

Corollary: no individual nation is able to shoulder such responsibilities.

Ukraine never really had nukes. Only technically.

NATO is bad for the world so any one fighting it are pretty cool. Which seems to be Russia and Korea.

Then you're in no position to throw rocks. The US is currently humiliating itself on the world stage in a fashion that makes Brexit look positively sage in comparison.

China. If they wanted to.

Given that the nukes that the UK has is Trident, which is a US system that the UK cannot use without US cooperation [0], it seems entirely appropriate that the USA gets to decide if the UK has nukes.

[0] Yes, the UK can fire them without US approval, but the actual hardware is maintained and supported by the USA, and they have to be shipped to the USA regularly for maintenance. If the USA decided that the UK should not have nukes, there's not a lot the UK could do about it, the Trident system would have to be scrapped entirely and replaced with some completely different system. Which the UK doesn't really have the capability to do and it would cost a fortune to acquire that capability.

That's only the delivery method, the warheads are UK-designed and built.

So yes, if the US withdrew support then the existing nuclear program would be pretty fucked for a while, but the US couldn't unilaterally de-nuclearise the UK.

Come now American people,

The UK and France have long had a project 'on the shelf' to substitute the missiles with the French M51 ballistic missiles.

They don't want to do it, they'll do it if they have to.

Imagine thinking that there aren't national security contingency plans for this sort of thing.

> they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.

I really hope this wasn't posted by an American....

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