In fact the only important bit of kit that is missing is Harrison’s sea clock – also exhibited close-by here in Greenwich and also commissioned in the same era, that allowed every ship in the world to determine how far they were from this Meridian.
So this is it. This is the newly forged United Kingdom on the slipway: this is the moment when it all took off.
…
In that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
The UK is a ship being launched, a newly forged ship. The UK is also a newspaper reporter taking off his spectacles, for modesty’s sake briefly visiting a phonebooth, then emerging as a supercharged champion of free trade as an instrument against market damage resulting from new diseases such as coronavirus, a supercharged champion of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other. The UK is the government that humanity needs at this moment.
