There are some very real symptoms of Britain's slow slide downwards

Photo by Diane Picchiottino on Unsplash

Any consideration of Britain’s place in the world today (as well as the so-called “saviour narrative”) should factor in a key point: by some measures, real wages in the UK are lower than they were 15 years ago and will probably be even lower next year.

In fact, The Atlantic recently carried a musings on the subject of Britain’s slow slide into poverty. It bore the dismal headline “How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe”. And it tossed around phrases such as a “decades-long economic dysfunction”, “calamity” and “pretty poor for a rich place”.

Overstated? Over-egged? To be fair, staff writer Derek Thompson does show his workings.

His argument is that even though Britain gave the world modern capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, its response to the post-World War II order picked the frothy financial sector rather than the solidity of industry.

With its economy growing slower than those of much of continental Europe, Mr T…