Don’t Bet Against Britain

February 2026

Brits are known for their self-deprecation. Recent years however have seen that pessimism exported abroad and now Britaindooming has become an international phenomenon. The “Yookay” blackpilling market is booming, and Anglodeclinism is in the vogue. Of all my contrarian takes, the one which is objected to most harshly is that the UK is going to be fine: Anglo-optimism, if you will. Everyone, relax, it's going to be okay. At that moment, the unison of people I’m speaking to effortlessly reel off an array of ONS data in chorus, backed up by emotive anecdotes. Nick, 30ans, is real. Crime, inflation, fertility rates, productivity, demographics, decaying social trust, energy costs, declining manufacturing, our tiny military, an unsustainable welfare bill, a barren graduate jobs market, creaking infrastructure, the fiscal doom loop; the list goes on. There is a lot to fix in Britain today and it will be neither easy nor quick. It's hard to rebuttle these statistics when most of those factors are worringly trending worse.

This is missing the wood for the trees. My argument is a macro-spiritual one. It is a descriptive observation, not a causal theory nor a prescriptive solution. It is simply that Britain and its main ancestor England have a world-beating record in perserverance. Our nation has endured and overcome far worse. In 1066, we are conquered and genocided. In 1215, civil war allows the French to take control of London. In the 1350s, our population halves during the Black Death. In 1588, 1805, and 1940 we are days from invasion by a vast continental empire. We defeat all of them against the odds.

The most dramatic turnaround preceded all of these however, before England was even a unified country. In 878, our ancestors were confined to what is now Somerset, surrounded on all sides by vast Viking armies. At that dark moment, Anglo-Saxon civilisation was doomed for extinction in its infancy. Miraculous leadership by King Alfred that year saved England - paradoxically - before it was even created, and beyond his wildest dreams Anglo-Saxon civilisation went on to build the world over the next thousand years.

And now in 2026, you don't think Britain has the willpower to solve her current predicament? Those same people, disparagingly described by the Romans as backward swamp-dwellers, who have the highest number of Nobel prize winners per capita on Earth? Do you truly think that the people of that small and windswept island in the north Atlantic, who invented common law, the industrial revolution, computing, the jet engine, and nuclear physics, haven't got it in them to save themselves? They have a 1000-year-long track record of doing so repeatedly, and they will do so again. If, as Spengler and Ibn Khaldun contend, countries become decadent during the good times, then Britain is at her most potent during the hard times. We excel as the underdog.

As bold as this thesis is, it is just that: a thesis. Realising this and turning Britain around will not be a thesis but a monumental project. It will involve brilliant people doing very difficult things for decades. Things very well may get worse before they get better. How and when the turnaround happens, and by whom it is lead, no one can claim to know. You have to believe it will happen.

England, and then Britain, has been around for over a millenium. I'm betting on another milleninum ahead. In the coming centuries, our descendants will lead the world in fantastical technologies we cannot even fathom. Everyone, relax, it's going to be okay.