Remember "Cool Britannia"?

On ConHome, ex-Tory MP Howard Flight reports on Chinese and Indian views on the current state of Britain.

From Asia, we look “tired”, economically debilitated by the explosion of socialist Public Sector spending and trying to continue an historic, global military role which we can no longer afford. The great success of the last 30 years of restoring London as the world’s leading, financial centre looks weakened, not only by the banking crisis and political attacks on the City, but also by the rise of financial centres in Asia. Hong Kong is currently raising substantially more for new issues than London and New York put together: Singapore has advanced significantly as the leading off-shore centre.

The EU and its deeply flawed structure is not well understood, but there is the perception that Britain would better re-build and increase its commercial and trading activities with Asia, and India in particular; and that, generally, the EU is condemned to be a stagnant economic area. Our “green” policies are seen as economic masochism, seriously damaging the competitiveness of our industries. We are seen as having sacrificed growth for too high a mass level of consumption, financed by excessive taxation on the wealth creators and too high a level of both private and public borrowing.

That's not just the view from Asia, mate.