Britain came out of WW2 deeply fcuk'd. We'd lost the Empire, owed the US a crapton in loans, and then were economically smothered under a nationalisation programme that wiped out UK manufacturing competitiveness. At least we got the NHS (no small thing) and a passable social security system out of it. The economy we have today is the one Maggie re-engineered in the 1980s. Even the Blair government had the good sense to not dare touch it.
People underestimate just how bad Britain was financially after WW2. The one thing that hit home for me was Britain still had a good ration system in place until the early 1950’s (obviously fewer and few items as time went by).
> Britain came out of WW2 deeply fcuk'd. We'd lost the Empire, owed the US a crapton in loans, and then were economically smothered under a nationalisation programme that wiped out UK manufacturing competitiveness.
.. and on all those metrics China came out much worse (the civil war, no marshall plan, proxy war with the US, communism), as well as not having the massive advantage of having been an industrial power long before the war.
