Let's do down the country again - and take a different angle on it so it sounds new

What Peter Hitchins seems to have forgotten in his article today is that Britain has historically punched above its weight. We're a small island nation which established one of the biggest empires in the world, it was inevitable that when our empire fell (as all empires eventually must) that would lead to the country no longer being a superpower, this isn't a recent thing. Hitchins seems to blame every overblown problem this country has on fighting WWII, which apparently means we currently face...

conditions we might normally associate with defeat and occupation?

I'm sorry? Are the people in this country being denied basic freedoms? Do we have an undemocratically elected government? No, we don't, this country may not be perfect but it's a better place to live than Soviet occupied countries during the Cold War.

We are a second-rate power, rapidly slipping into third-rate status

By what measures? Britain is part of the G8 group of economic powers, we are in the top 20s of lists of GDP per capita, London is one of the world's leading trading centres, this is not a second or third rate economic power. We have considerable foreign influence, being one of the America's closest allies. Britain may not have an empire anymore (nobody does) and we may not be a superpower but we are one of the world's foremost powers.

The rest of his article is used to tell us how bad the country is... feral youths... blah blah blah... anti British dogma... blah blah... unelected government... squalid hospitals... everything's bad... AREN'T YOU LISTENING, the country is terrible...blah blah... foreigners... immigrants.

In conclusion, your life is terrible, you don't live in an economically developed democratic country that is mainly safe and not that corrupt... you're living in Broken Britain..