On current exchange rates, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy, but no one seriously believes it produces more goods and services than India, Brazil or Indonesia. The UK’s prosperity level is not even in the top 15 per cent of IMF members. The US, Germany and France are far ahead of Britain in the productivity league table and output per head and per worker does not even match that of Italy. Spending on public services is severely strained: at 39 per cent of national income, it is 5 percentage points below that of Germany. Britain's economy: how strong is it?
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51