Britain has always been a poor country as a whole. Maybe for a while things looked great, but that was only because of great wealth disparity where a few people

Britain has always been a poor country as a whole. Maybe for a while things looked great, but that was only because of great wealth disparity where a few people were really, really rich and many people were really, really poor. Nobody cared about the rural peasants, or the urban families that lived in one small room without water, sanitation, education, healthcare, or enough food. But, hey, look at the aristocrats, the commercial kingpins, and the Royals. Also, for a hundred or so years, Britain extracted a lot of wealth from its Empire. When that went away in the 1940s, there was a lot less money floating around, even for the upper classes. Britain hasn't become poor, it always was.