Decline of USA mirrors our own

At last we have some good news from across ‘The Pond’.

The USA has come to its senses and elected a president who will communicate with the rest of the world.

Although the ‘special relationship’ is more myth than reality, there is no doubt that the USA still has considerable influence on British politics. Donald Trump was the false prophet who claimed he could ‘Make America Great Again’ by leading them back to the heady days after the Second World War when they were the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and politically.

Since then, they have declined economically with the rapid rise of the Asian nations and their political influence has also been affected by several conflicts, many of which have proved disastrous.

If it sounds familiar, it is because there is a similar pattern here in the UK, where two world wars have accelerated our decline from the peak of the British Empire in the 1890s!

We also have our prophets who predict that by leaving the EU and ‘going it alone’ we can restore the UK to some of its former greatness. However since the UK has declined to a shadow of its former self, this would seem unlikely; but as the saying goes, only time will tell.

The Americans at least have the excuse that their heyday is within living memory of their older generation, whereas we can only hark back to ‘the good old days’ when the sun never set over some part of the British Empire! Mike Armstrong

Queens Avenue, Canterbury