Interesting - I had never associated the rate of energy consumption with jingoism, but based on some of the comments here it clearly is.

I guess it’s sort of a “I drive a large inefficient car and that’s a good thing” kind of situation? Excessive unnecessary production and consumption is a positive trait?

Standard of life and energy consumption are clearly correlated, though in the long-term improved efficiency makes this hard to evaluate.

The fact is, the UK has undergone a nearly complete deindustrialization in that period. e.g 'cars made per capita' is about 1/3 what it was. Domestic white goods are gone. Commercial shipbuilding is gone. Consumer electronics is gone. Domestic textiles are gone. Steel smelting (and nearly recycling) and machine tools are gone. For centuries(decades) these things were quintessentially British.

Certainly doesn't help that AI datacenters use energy consumption as a stand-in for scale, so now the "line must go up" market growth psychology is spreading into power consumption overall as a bigger = better thing.