I was in a couple of British colonies before they became independent. They were much better off than they are today. The Brits maintained law and order and allowed commerce to proceed without too much interference. Yes, they used the colonies as raw material sources for their manufactured goods, which were generally first class. It was a win, win relationship.

They gave up their empire because the world demanded it, and they were too weakened by WWI and II to resist. Their story is an object lesson for us all. Nations rise, reach a peak of power, then decline – mostly due to poor leadership and a citizenry who no longae have the desire to work hard and choose their leaders wisely.

You grow up in Honolulu?

Her brother-in-law was rotten, though inspiring to his children and weirdly attractive to women-in-general. Her sister ended her life as an appalling ruin. Three of her children married dubious characters. One of her children has been appropriately disgraced. One of her grandchildren has fallen under the spell of someone who is Trouble. It’s a scuffed up family with members who have demonstrated bad judgment ad seriatim. Not seeing how the family is rotten.

I wonder if it was seeing clips of her new Prime Minister as a teenager wanting to abolish the monarchy that finished off the old queen. Liz Truss was a veritable Greta Thunberg know-it-all in her day.

But the queen was the best of a rotten family and did her job well for 70 years. She gave Britain, and the rest of the world a feeling of (an illusion of?) stability and security that will be missed.

Indeed. Let’s NOT consider, especially, that entirely understandable propensity to readily accept rather significant “gifts” from [potentially] grateful sheikhdoms…(and others?)…

(OTOH, it could be merely a “Royals” sort of thing…entirely incomprehensible to the hoi polloi.)

That, together with the seeming impossibility of HRH keeping his royal gab shut would also seem to be a “Royal Prerogative”; though his mother did seem to master the art. Guess Charles didn’t inherit that particular gene…
(OTOH, might that be the reason why she fell head over heels for that Greek scion, irrepressible as he was….?)

Even as we speak the—speaking of “irrepressible”—Brit Bookies are weighing the odds on whether HRH will truly be able to keep it zipped (and for how long)….

And yet, and yet, these are the cards that have been dealt. And so…
God Bless ERII and Long Live the King (but please, PLEASE, try to suppress those, um, vocal URGES…)

MBunge:

Agreed.

Peter Zeihan argues that Brexit Brits who come to Washington for a trade deal will be treated as badly as FDR treated the Brits in Lend-Lease during WW II. Churchill was fighting for survival and couldn’t be picky. The British Empire was over.

I can certainly see Biden or any other Democrat POTUS doing the same today. I’m not sure what happened with Trump and Brexit. I would like to think a Republican President would be more welcoming.

Britain’s future might be very well tied up in the 2024 election. They need a President who will strike a free trade deal that doesn’t bend Brits over a barrel to benefit the oligarchs of Wall Street.

Mike