In Oscar Wilde’s the Picture of Dorian Gray which was published in 1890 there is a memorable paragraph where Dorian’s friend Lord Henry goes to see his uncle in London (I’ll provide the quote from Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this blog post). The paragraph is memorable because it features a common conversation theme that is still relevant in 2026 and indeed has been relevant in Scotland and England for most of my life. The theme is that the country is in decline and life is getting worse everyday. It’s interesting because even 130 years ago they were saying the same thing and when people blame events like the 2009 financial crisis and Brexit one wonders if people would talk like that anyway (if these events had not happened). Everyday when I scroll down my Tiktok feed and Youtube and Google news there are always articles building on this theme and suggesting the people are leaving for sunnier shores and more promising places. Even major news outlets like the New York Times and the Times produce articles that perpetuate such themes. I will link such articles below.
Anyway this post will outline why Britain is in fact not as much in decline as you think.
Firstly, although lots of the infrastructure is old and is often expensive to use. It’s there and it does work. I mean roads, railway lines, power stations, electrical infrastructure, internet cables. People often criticize litter on the streets, potholes on the roads, expensive rail fares, miserable weather typical in these rants about Britain. But firstly a country is more than the physical place, it’s the people. Secondly, in 2026 there are very seldom power cuts. The internet can be relied upon. The trains largely run when you need them. Locally the buses have been very unreliable these past couple of years admittedly. Infrastructure is old but it works, is my point.
Britain’s institutions (BBC, NHS, the government, the police, the judiciary) are largely stable and though often underfunded they do work as intended. Elections run properly (recent local council elections and Scottish national election) and corruption is dealt with (for example SNP’s Peter Murrell). There is freedom of expression unlike in city states like Singapore and Hong Kong (with the national security law).
Another big criticism is the lack of economic growth of the UK (lack of productivity per capita) and the weakness of Britain in scaling up its innovative research. Big news outlets like the economist and the Telegraph and Spectator often write articles citing these trends. And walking down lots of high streets in 2026 in post industrial towns like Ayr and Perth you can even understand why so many Youtuber’s seize upon this topic.
However in a lot of ways Britain still punches above its weight. People across the world continue to watch the English Premier League. ‘The Premier League is broadcast in 189 countries, making it accessible to nearly 900 million homes worldwide, with an estimated 1.87 billion people following the league globally and interacting with its content at least once a week.’
JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series has sold over 600 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling book series in history. The book series transformed children’s literature across the globe and a film series was produced with a TV series scheduled to be released later this year.
In Finance and Science the UK also excels. London continues to dominate Europe in finance and is second only to New York globally (see link below). British universities continue to thrive going into the second half of the Twenties. Oxford and Cambridge consistently rank among the top five universities in the world. The University of Oxford developed one of the world’s most widely distributed Covid vaccines, later estimated to have saved millions of lives — a reminder that British science remains world-class. DeepMind was founded in London in 2010 by Nobel prize winner Demis Hassabis. DeepMind’s AlphaFold work on protein folding earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.
People continue to queue up to visit the UK, 42.6 million people visited in 2024 (latest data available).
High street decline is a real problem in Britain in 2026 however it is shared across the globe by many cities and countries in the age of Amazon and the World Wide Web.
In another of Oscar Wilde’s works Lady Windermere’s Fan written in 1892 Lord Darlington says “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Britain has its potholes and its empty shopfronts, its grumbling Lord Fermors and its doom-scrolling TikTok feeds. But 42 million visitors came anyway. The stars are still there.
“At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador at Madrid when Isabella was young, and Prim unthought of, but had retired from the Diplomatic Service in a capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English of his despatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. The son, who had been his father’s secretary, had resigned along with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers, as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.”
Leave a Reply