I read the article. My comment was prompted by this:

> One reason for this is that parts of the British state are fundamentally misaligned with goals like ‘improving living standards’ or ‘increasing wealth’, whether that’s through hand-wringingly incompetent procurement processes, long-term failure to invest in the infrastructure and management required to support ‘moar frontline staff!!’, acute treasury brain, or endless cohorts of committees and quangos.

> The current level of ambition, of vision, just doesn’t match up to the situation we’re in.

It’s about a failure of state capacity. The article’s entire argument hinges on why British institutions can no longer turn wealth into functioning systems. The post-imperial loss of strategic vision among British elites is not a distraction: it’s the historical foundation of the current malaise.

Suez was the moment Britain exited the world stage and never figured out what it stood for domestically in the vacuum that followed.

You can’t talk about the failure to invest, coordinate, or reform over decades without asking why the ruling class stopped trying.