22A037 Unruled Waves by Jim Davies, 9/13/2022

When she became Queen in 1953, £1 would buy $4; when Elizabeth II died on September 8th it would buy only $1. Such is one measure of the decline of Britannia, one-time ruler of the waves according to James Thompson.

It's only relative. Over the same period the US Dollar itself lost over 90% of its purchasing power, due to the eagerness of the FedGov to spend money it doesn't have; but that exchange-rate change does indicate how the 19th Century Pax Britannica morphed into today's Pax Americana, if what we now have is Pax; that too is relative.

Who's to blame? - not, I think, Her late Majesty. As shown in Long-Living Lipstick, the British monarch has not been a ruler for over three centuries, since Charles I. (S)he merely reigns, a valuable figurehead, Head of State only nominally, dispensing advice to governments that may or may not be useful and may or may not be taken. No, the blame rests on those with actual power, but who were especially dumb.

The two dumbest were Winston Churchill and Clement Atlee. The former actively lobbied for Britain to enter WW1 when there was neither need nor obligation, and 25 years later, having promoted hostility to Germany, took charge as a wartime Prime Minister and deliberately turned down three quite reasonable proposals for peace from Hitler so as to wage WW2 to its bitter conclusion. Both wars were crippling to the UK economy and go far to explain the decline in its fortunes and why it was for long in hock to the US of A.

Atlee was in charge for only seven years, but the wreckage his government caused was incalculable, coming as it did on top of the ruin caused by WW2. He deliberately instituted most of the Communist Manifesto; punitive income tax to discourage excellence, nationalization of fuel, transport (rail and even trucking!), power generation and other "commanding heights of the economy;" ongoing rationing of food, and health; they created the National Health Service, a government monopoly mendaciously advertised as being "free" and available as of "right"! On top of that trade unions were given full rein to hold any recalcitrant employer to ransom; a power which lasted thirty years until dismantled by Margaret Thatcher.

It's hard to think of any program that would more effectively close down enterprise and economic recovery. Britain enjoyed a measure of prosperity in the 1960s and 1980s and some reasonable growth since, but was heavily hobbled by this folly for the whole of that period.

Come 2020, and a Conservative (Conservative!) government savaged the UK economy again, by dictating the closure of thousands of small businesses, which are the backbone of the economy, on the pretext of a plague that never existed. Then come 2022 and the same Conservative government savaged it again by closing trade with Russia and stealing resources from the people to send lethal weapons to Russia's opponent in Ukraine. Evidently, even Conservative governments now wish to destroy enterprise! When I was a small boy, their slogan was "Conservative Freedom Works." Freedom certainly still does; evidently, Conservatives no longer do.

Such has been the decline of a once-great nation; yet it faces no difficulty that the extermination of government would not resolve.