Millions of people will be watching the coronation of King Charles this weekend and enjoying what Britain is very good at - pomp and ceremony. But rather controversially I believe that it is an opportunity missed. The coronation on Saturday will be similar to that of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 but probably smaller.
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A Spanish friend of mine recently visited the UK for the first time in 10 years and said that he couldn't believe how run down it was.
You offer no examples to support your claim that Britain is still a great place. Some lovely countryside for sure but that counts for many other countries too (with better weather).
I haven't yet seen a "new Britain". It's still trying to dig itself out of the setbacks of wagering its future chasing a rosy version of nostalgic past glory. And until recently, it seems it's been indeed headed backwards. If anything resembling a "new Britain" ever emerges from its (unwitting) isolationism, I'll be the first to cheer it on. But it still has a long ways to go to catch up. It's still stagnant or moving backwards. Yet stagnant is better than backwards. It seems it's been more stagnant than backwards in the past year or so, and that's encouraging. Yet politically, it's not out of the woods yet. There's no Messiah. It seems it's just one ideologue after another. People are frustrated. Sensibility is very unpopular. So any sensible political party doesn't stand a chance. Yet all it really needs is to simply adopt a little humility and (collectively) truly realise that it's not the global power it once was, and won't ever be again. It's going to need a lot of help from "others" to repair the damage from this. It doesn't serve that goal to continue to pretend it's above them all. The jingoist hubris seems to be cooling off now. And that's encouraging. But it's not quite a "new Britain" yet.