The endless myth of British decline

The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, recently compared the British economy with that of Argentina. This was typical of those Remainers who cannot imagine that a country ignoring them could possibly succeed, and who often seem to will it to fail. That Carney’s sneer did not merely provoke laughter is because far from being a random remark, it stems from generations of negativity about Britain. This hangs albatross-like round our collective neck. So deeply has it penetrated our culture that I suggest it accounts for much of the failure to profit from the Leave vote.

Over and over again, British policy has been marked by apology, concession, timidity and lack of ambition. Now it appears that whether under a Conservative or a Labour government we are drifting back humbly towards the EU, hoping that they will in return forgive us for the 2016 rebellion. So we seriously contemplate the old French plan to make us an EU satellite, politically, militarily, economically and intellectually – just as the EU, serenely unnoticed by its British devotees, lurches from crisis to crisis.

Would we do this if our political establishment had not long convinced itself that we are a nation that has seen better days – a faded beauty, as Harold Wilson put it – and should not try too hard to assert its own interests? We as a nation know so little history that we are easily taken in by myths and exaggerations.