An intelligent person's guide to post-war Britain - Alan Sked

The aim of this book is to explode the myth that the United Kingdom is now a tired and run-down country still dreaming of, if not living in, its class-ridden imperial past. It departs from the view that the country's history should be a cause for shame, and that in order to reverse its well-merited decline it has to adopt such extreme solutions as those of Chapter 88, devolution or rule from Brussels.;Instead, the author puts Britain's "relative decline" into historical perspective and suggests that the country is on the brink of a prosperous future - as long as it withdraws from the European Union.;The author shows that the major causes of the nation's decline - the effects of world war, the role of sterling as a reserve currency, its endemically bad industrial relations - are now behind it, and that the only shackle on future progress is its membership of the EU. In the course of the analysis, the author looks at Britain's political institutions, social and legal structures and foreign relations.