8 ms·

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

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.

bromuk 7mo ago
I mean the US have nukes and they’re hardly stable and predictable. Allow them to have nukes, who are you lol
- observationist 7mo ago
  >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?
  - PUSH_AX 7mo ago
    Probably a country that has done so in the past, like the UK…
  - inopinatus 7mo ago
    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.
    - k33n 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - dgroshev 7mo ago
        > recused itself Surrendered.
        reverius42 7mo ago
        More like abandoned an ally because the new government prefers a former adversary on the other side of the conflict.
        k33n 7mo ago
        Ukraine simply isn't of any strategic importance to the US.
      - reverius42 7mo ago
        > the US fully having its way with them So the Straights of Hormuz are totally reopened, right? Any day now?
        Auracle 7mo ago
        It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone. That’s a pretty specific high bar when we’ve destroyed most of their navy, Air Force, etc, all within a couple of weeks.
        solid_fuel 7mo ago
        > It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone. Man, maybe the US should have had a contingency plan to address the drone issue before launching an unprovoked attack. > That’s a pretty specific high bar It's the bar that matters.
        cthalupa 7mo ago
        The best part is that Ukraine wanted to sell us their anti-drone tech to us a year ago and Trump and co didn't see fit to pursue it. Did they not know that the Shahed-136 has seen massive fucking use in Ukraine by Russia? Did they not think that Ukraine now being able to shoot like 75%+ of them down might be an indication that, if we are planning to start some stupid pointless war with the country that makes these drones, it might be a good idea to have that same capability? Or did they think we have an infinite ammo cheat, and we can just launch an infinite number of missiles that cost millions of dollars to shoot down a drone that costs tens of thousands? We had literally years of intelligence on the capabilities of these drones. The admin claims "We thought it was Zelensky being Zelensky. Self promotion" - but we know how successful their anti-drone capabilities are. We have the data! YOU JUST HAD TO TALK TO THE PEOPLE TO VERIFY IT. The sheer incompetence of these people is astounding.
    - skinnymuch 7mo ago
      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.
  - jjtwixman 7mo ago
    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.
  - ta20240528 7mo ago
    China. If they wanted to.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  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.
  - Nursie 7mo ago
    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.
  - ta20240528 7mo ago
    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.
  - Chaosvex 7mo ago
    Imagine thinking that there aren't national security contingency plans for this sort of thing.
philipov 7mo ago
> 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?
- nemomarx 7mo ago
  China's probably making the best argument for it now.
  - gerdesj 7mo ago
    China's wot?
    - fc417fc802 7mo ago
      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.
      - andrewflnr 7mo ago
        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.
        nemomarx 7mo ago
        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.
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        If Japan became involved would the US then become embroiled?
drnick1 7mo ago
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.
- consp 7mo ago
  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).
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  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.
  - swiftcoder 7mo ago
    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
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      The benefits keep stacking up! Joking aside, that was one of the worst own goals in history.
urbandw311er 7mo ago
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.
- magospietato 7mo ago
  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.
  - dgroshev 7mo ago
    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.
joegibbs 7mo ago
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.
- eucyclos 7mo ago
  The genteel class turning on jk Rowling was definitely a Waterloo moment in British cultural strength.
- heavyset_go 7mo ago
  It's deliberate isolationism, the same isolationism that drove Brexit
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 7mo ago
    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.
    - joe_mamba 7mo ago
      [flagged]
dgroshev 7mo ago
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.
- ribosometronome 7mo ago
  >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.
  - dgroshev 7mo ago
    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.
RobotToaster 7mo ago
> 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....
FuckButtons 7mo ago
The thing about an independent nuclear deterrent is that it’s completely irrelevant what anyone else thinks about you having one.
matheusmoreira 7mo ago
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.
- harry8 7mo ago
  Did it work out better for North Korea or Iran?
  - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
    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?
    - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
      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.
      - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
        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.
Daviey 7mo ago
"allow"? Under what authority and governance would you remove them?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- pydry 7mo ago
  American exceptionalism is a law unto itself.
nradov 7mo ago
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?
- ExoticPearTree 7mo ago
  > 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?
  - eucyclos 7mo ago
    Do you mean the International Atomic Energy Agency?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
oytis 7mo ago
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.
remus 7mo ago
> 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.
- tremon 7mo ago
  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-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1168072/uk-gdp-per-head-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...
  - remus 7mo ago
    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).

bromuk 7mo ago

I mean the US have nukes and they’re hardly stable and predictable. Allow them to have nukes, who are you lol

observationist 7mo ago
>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?
- PUSH_AX 7mo ago
  Probably a country that has done so in the past, like the UK…
- inopinatus 7mo ago
  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.
  - k33n 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - dgroshev 7mo ago
      > recused itself Surrendered.
      - reverius42 7mo ago
        More like abandoned an ally because the new government prefers a former adversary on the other side of the conflict.
      - k33n 7mo ago
        Ukraine simply isn't of any strategic importance to the US.
    - reverius42 7mo ago
      > the US fully having its way with them So the Straights of Hormuz are totally reopened, right? Any day now?
      - Auracle 7mo ago
        It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone. That’s a pretty specific high bar when we’ve destroyed most of their navy, Air Force, etc, all within a couple of weeks.
        solid_fuel 7mo ago
        > It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone. Man, maybe the US should have had a contingency plan to address the drone issue before launching an unprovoked attack. > That’s a pretty specific high bar It's the bar that matters.
        cthalupa 7mo ago
        The best part is that Ukraine wanted to sell us their anti-drone tech to us a year ago and Trump and co didn't see fit to pursue it. Did they not know that the Shahed-136 has seen massive fucking use in Ukraine by Russia? Did they not think that Ukraine now being able to shoot like 75%+ of them down might be an indication that, if we are planning to start some stupid pointless war with the country that makes these drones, it might be a good idea to have that same capability? Or did they think we have an infinite ammo cheat, and we can just launch an infinite number of missiles that cost millions of dollars to shoot down a drone that costs tens of thousands? We had literally years of intelligence on the capabilities of these drones. The admin claims "We thought it was Zelensky being Zelensky. Self promotion" - but we know how successful their anti-drone capabilities are. We have the data! YOU JUST HAD TO TALK TO THE PEOPLE TO VERIFY IT. The sheer incompetence of these people is astounding.
  - skinnymuch 7mo ago
    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.
- jjtwixman 7mo ago
  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.
- ta20240528 7mo ago
  China. If they wanted to.
marcus_holmes 7mo ago
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.
- Nursie 7mo ago
  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.
- ta20240528 7mo ago
  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.
- Chaosvex 7mo ago
  Imagine thinking that there aren't national security contingency plans for this sort of thing.

philipov 7mo ago

> 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?

nemomarx 7mo ago
China's probably making the best argument for it now.
- gerdesj 7mo ago
  China's wot?
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    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.
    - andrewflnr 7mo ago
      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.
      - nemomarx 7mo ago
        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.
        fc417fc802 7mo ago
        If Japan became involved would the US then become embroiled?

drnick1 7mo ago

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.

consp 7mo ago
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).
jacquesm 7mo ago
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.
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
  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
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    The benefits keep stacking up! Joking aside, that was one of the worst own goals in history.

urbandw311er 7mo ago

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.

magospietato 7mo ago
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.
- dgroshev 7mo ago
  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.

joegibbs 7mo ago

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.

eucyclos 7mo ago
The genteel class turning on jk Rowling was definitely a Waterloo moment in British cultural strength.
heavyset_go 7mo ago
It's deliberate isolationism, the same isolationism that drove Brexit
- NoMoreNicksLeft 7mo ago
  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.
  - joe_mamba 7mo ago
    [flagged]

dgroshev 7mo ago

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.

ribosometronome 7mo ago
>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.
- dgroshev 7mo ago
  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.

RobotToaster 7mo ago

> 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....

FuckButtons 7mo ago

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

matheusmoreira 7mo ago

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.

harry8 7mo ago
Did it work out better for North Korea or Iran?
- matheusmoreira 7mo ago
  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?
  - kelvinjps10 7mo ago
    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.
    - matheusmoreira 7mo ago
      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.

Daviey 7mo ago

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

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
pydry 7mo ago
American exceptionalism is a law unto itself.

nradov 7mo ago

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?

ExoticPearTree 7mo ago
> 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?
- eucyclos 7mo ago
  Do you mean the International Atomic Energy Agency?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]

oytis 7mo ago

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.

remus 7mo ago

> 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.

tremon 7mo ago
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-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1168072/uk-gdp-per-head-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...
- remus 7mo ago
  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).