A familiar spectre is haunting Britain: that of decline. High inflation, low growth, industrial strife and Brexit have combined to create an inescapable sense of national malaise. Though the left and the right disagree on the appropriate remedies, there is a shared belief that the UK’s position has rarely been more parlous.
There are few people who have interrogated the subject of British decline more deeply than the historian David Edgerton. His most acclaimed work, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation (2018), repudiated traditional narratives about the UK’s past. Most notably, he challenged the “declinist” school, which he accused of promoting an exaggerated and solipsistic account of national failure. Britain’s apparent decline, Edgerton contended, is more often than not confused with the rise of rival powers: the US, Japan, Germany. Being overtaken by others is not the same as going backwards.
Content from our partners
