Unquestionably, the first half of the twentieth century, and the century before that, belonged to Britain. At its apogee the British Empire covered one-fourth of the globe and it was said that the sun never set on the Empire, allegedly, because God could not trust Britons in the dark. However, after Britain lost its colonies to nationalist movements, its fall was precipitous; to maintain a semblance of its non-existent importance, wholly unmindful of the epithet ‘American poodle,’ British governments, regardless of party affiliation, determinedly stuck to its war-time ally US’s coattails.

Now, Donald Trump has brought even the days of reflected glory to an ignominious end, making it markedly clear that Britain should look after its own, and the US will give no preferential treatment to Britain, subjecting British goods to the same tariffs that the US levied on other countries. The economic jolt, even before it was delivered, has almost dismantled the socialist welfare paradise that Britain had turned into; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves had to cut welfare allocations all around, including those for the old and disabled.

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Savings from the welfare budget cut were repurposed for increasing the defence budget. After some unsuccessful wheedling at the White House, the British PM, in his meetings with his European peers, who had been similarly rebuffed by Trump, bravely talked about enhancing Britain’s defence capabilities. Like the rest of the Western World, Britain had long outsourced its manufacturing to China, relying on services that were cleaner, non-polluting, and required little labour for earning its bread and butter.

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Now, the chickens have come home to roost. America was much in the same boat, but had become serious about reindustrialising and having an indigenous supply chain for producing military hardware, during the Bid en Presidency ~ motivated mainly by its aim to reduce dependence on arch-rival China. Right from the nineteenth century, industrialisation and its symbiotic relationship with colonisation, had fuelled British dominance over the rest of the world; colonies provided raw material to industries, and a ready market for........

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