America pretends to give a shit about Britain- Britain believes it.

It's quite cute how British politicians and media outlets seem to still believe the UK is some kind of major world player. Obama comes to visit us and gives us a speech about how "we" are important players on the world stage and how the special relationship between the UK and the US lives strong and is important to world peace and some other stuff. But do we really believe that? The UK's presence on the world stage is pretty much limited to a supporting role these days. We can help or hinder whatever it is the US is trying to do, which is why they want to keep us on their side, but the idea that we are "partners" is quite overblown.

All right so for a country of our size we do have a comparatively large impact on the world, but we seem to keep forgetting that we need to keep that "for our size" part in mind. We're essentially the greatest irritant to superpowers, which is fairly impressive in itself, but we don't hold much power any more. We're pretty much 5th best at everything, good but not great at everything.

Laugh fools, your future leader demands it

Obama's speech to the UK parliament today could have been rewritten much more simply to just be "We like you, would you please keep supporting what we're doing with money and troops?". Who can really blame us for pretending we're still a big player though. For a hundred years or so we were the biggest empire in the world and one of the primary world movers and shakers. Unfortunately that is over, and we are struggling to accept the fact that we are just one of the herd now. Especially as we have transformed ourselves into a financial capital of the world. You can't really make a cultural impact being a financier. When you look back over the annals of history you don't go "my god, that country was rich" or "wow, that country really financed a whole bunch of stuff". It's cultural impact which is remembered, and we've not really got much power on that front any more. Admittedly, we still produce more than our fair share of good books, films and music. But what happens when they become truly successful? They bugger off to America to become popular over there because of the much larger and more important market.

On the plus side, it does me we get rid of people like Russel Brand and Piers Morgan as they swan off to break the US. It's quite amusing how well an utterly hated leech like Morgan has done over in America simply because they don't bother to look past his posh British accent to the slimeball underneath.

Britain's greatest loss to the US

Another element of Obama's speech which was amusing was his insistence that the time for western leadership was not over, but that we should continue to lead despite the upcoming world powers in other areas. He said this as if anyone was expecting the western powers to just step down gracefully and let other people run the show. If eastern and asian powers do rise to the level it appears they might, do we really think that the west is just going to let them run things? It is inevitable that western and more modern superpowers will either come to work together or clash in the future. The idea that anyone even thought of the US backing down from the world stage is frankly laughable.