The Empire's hangover.

 "British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would quit on Monday (yesterday), paving the way for the country to have its seventh leader in ten years. The chaos dates back to the Brexit referendum 10 years ago to the day on Tuesday (today). Reuters. "On 23 June 2016, the UK held a referendum on its membership of the European Union (EU)." "51.89% of voters voted to leave the EU. The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020." government.nl. Having lost the referendum David Cameron left in 2016, Theresa May in 2019, Boris Johnson in 2022, Liz Truss, after just 44 days in office, also in 2022, Rishi Sunak after losing the general election in 2024, which brought in Keir Starmer, with a super-majority for Labour in the House of Commons with 411 out of a total of 650 seats (House of Commons Library), but even that could not save him. Starmer lasted just two years, less than May and Johnson. According to the US National Bureau of Economic Research, "Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6%-8% by 2025 compared with if Britain had remained in EU, Productivity and employment reduced by 3% to 4% and Investment reduced by 12%-18%." These are enormous figures, but Covid may have contributed to the slowdown. Other institutions have calculated differently. Reuters. The Keir Starmer government was pro-EU, "But the tangible benefits have been limited." "Opinion polls show that a majority of people in Britain regret leaving the EU and want to rejoin the bloc. But a YouGov poll this month showed that support fell away once people were asked about the possible implications or costs of rejoining, particularly around immigration and the future of the pound." Reuters. Voters wanted a sharp reduction in immigration, but in this  "Brexit has failed spectacularly. Net migration to the UK has averaged 550,000 a year since 2021,...compared to 250,000 in the 2010s, according to the Migration Observatory of Oxford. In 2023, net migration was just under 950,000, an all-time high, as immigration by non-EU citizens spiked before dropping sharply." CNN. Why do people from other countries want to migrate to the UK, a tiny country with a land area of just 242,741 sq km, with a population of about 70 million (wikipedia), and a nominal GDP of $3.686 trillion in 2024 (World Bank)? Maybe because between one and two billion people in 88 countries and territories speak English  (wikipedia) and "An estimated 90% of the training data for current generative AI systems stems from English (The Convesation)." "Mainstream American English is entrenched in the digital infrastructure of the internet, in Silicon Valley's corporate priorities, and in the data sets that fuel everything from autocorrect to AI generated synthetic text." If you want your research paper in science to be read widely, it must be in English. "In 2023, about 85% of the roughly five million articles indexed in major global databases covering the natural, medical and social sciences were written in English. In 1990, the proportion was considerably higher: 94%." phys.org. The reason for this anomaly was the British Empire. "At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the largest empire in history," and "By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35.5 million sq km, 24% of the Earth's total land area." wikipedia. The British should realize that those days are over. Now the UK is just a small island with no natural resources. Get close to the EU, stop coddling illegal immigrants. concentrate on trade and services you are good at. Learn from Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland and other successful small countries. Or keep changing prime ministers.