A British "Empire" 2.0
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As said, this needs to happen after the First World War. But if one is going to stick resolutely to the post-1945 POD, there needs to be a handful of primary objectives:
1) Advancing the country's mastery of science and technology (aerospace, automobiles, nuclear energy, et cetera) to a level above rivals, and then maintain that mastery for long periods of time to allow your industrial powers to be able to establish firm market share;
2) Keep the country's industrial and manufacturing sectors efficient and profitable, and have these companies and sectors be able to maintain a presence in the Commonwealth countries;
3) Smoother and more gradual decolonization, complete with building up the civil services, political systems, economies and societies of these countries so that they thrive after the colonial era, and thus have greater reason to stick with the Commonwealth in a more than name capacity;
4) Make India the ultimate example of 3) if you can, though avoiding or indeed probably slowing independence by 1945 is probably ASB;
5) Make relationships between Britain and as many of its former colonies as mutually beneficial as possible in not only diplomatic and trade benefits but also social ones;
6) Retain as many of the Empire's global trading hubs as possible - Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, et cetera - and make maximum use of them to allow both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to use them as bases and to allow them to be global shipping hubs. If it is not possible to retain these as crown colonies than at least make them as close as possible with the Commonwealth.
7) Connected to 6) keep Britain's shipping industries as powerful as possible from the ships themselves to the companies moving them. It could be a huge advantage to have one country or a handful of close countries make the rules for your worldwide shipping networks.
8) As America is going to proudly defend capitalism and the Soviet Union is going to proudly defend socialism, find the middle ground while not alienating the other two. This is difficult, but not impossible.
1) Advancing the country's mastery of science and technology (aerospace, automobiles, nuclear energy, et cetera) to a level above rivals, and then maintain that mastery for long periods of time to allow your industrial powers to be able to establish firm market share;
2) Keep the country's industrial and manufacturing sectors efficient and profitable, and have these companies and sectors be able to maintain a presence in the Commonwealth countries;
3) Smoother and more gradual decolonization, complete with building up the civil services, political systems, economies and societies of these countries so that they thrive after the colonial era, and thus have greater reason to stick with the Commonwealth in a more than name capacity;
4) Make India the ultimate example of 3) if you can, though avoiding or indeed probably slowing independence by 1945 is probably ASB;
5) Make relationships between Britain and as many of its former colonies as mutually beneficial as possible in not only diplomatic and trade benefits but also social ones;
6) Retain as many of the Empire's global trading hubs as possible - Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, et cetera - and make maximum use of them to allow both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to use them as bases and to allow them to be global shipping hubs. If it is not possible to retain these as crown colonies than at least make them as close as possible with the Commonwealth.
7) Connected to 6) keep Britain's shipping industries as powerful as possible from the ships themselves to the companies moving them. It could be a huge advantage to have one country or a handful of close countries make the rules for your worldwide shipping networks.
8) As America is going to proudly defend capitalism and the Soviet Union is going to proudly defend socialism, find the middle ground while not alienating the other two. This is difficult, but not impossible.
It's fundamentally unlikely to be an independent great/super power after the 1960s whatever happens in the preceding 50 years (without going ASB).
Assuming the economy necessary to support this is one at least 50% the size of the US (and I think more is probably needed) then the British economy has to be at least three times the size. Now 50%ish is plausible (but would require major changes compared with OTL) as this would make the UK only a bit more productive than other large developed countries, but any more requires either a much larger workforce (about double) or implausible UK productivity advances (doubling in addition to the 50% improvement already assumed when growth per capita averages about 2.5%/year) that don't have any spillovers to other countries. No spillovers to other countries is needed since power is relative, if everyone goes up 50% then Britain's relative position is unchanged, Britain's GDP needs to triple relative to its competitors.
So it's possible for Britain to be a bigger player in the long run, say on a par with Germany. It's only possible to be part of an independent great power by subsuming itself into some other grouping (such as the EU) at which point GB is not an independent great power. It's possible for Britain to be independent (to stand alone/stay neutral) but then it will mostly be ignored and so won't be a great power.
Assuming the economy necessary to support this is one at least 50% the size of the US (and I think more is probably needed) then the British economy has to be at least three times the size. Now 50%ish is plausible (but would require major changes compared with OTL) as this would make the UK only a bit more productive than other large developed countries, but any more requires either a much larger workforce (about double) or implausible UK productivity advances (doubling in addition to the 50% improvement already assumed when growth per capita averages about 2.5%/year) that don't have any spillovers to other countries. No spillovers to other countries is needed since power is relative, if everyone goes up 50% then Britain's relative position is unchanged, Britain's GDP needs to triple relative to its competitors.
So it's possible for Britain to be a bigger player in the long run, say on a par with Germany. It's only possible to be part of an independent great power by subsuming itself into some other grouping (such as the EU) at which point GB is not an independent great power. It's possible for Britain to be independent (to stand alone/stay neutral) but then it will mostly be ignored and so won't be a great power.
This is OTL and it’s called the City of London. British imperialism today takes the form of finance capital rather than classical colonies (though of course finance capital was present in the previous incarnation as well), but the British Empire survives to this day.
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I agree with those who say an underlying general improvement in the economic strength/health of Britain is a pre-requisite for greater power, however I'd say that Britain made some pretty bad choices in terms of 'hard power' that made her less than she could have been even within the restraints of OTL economic position. The two immediately after the war with the biggest impacts were the cancellation of the Miles M52 project and the decision for the RN to deal with the Soviet sub threat defensively with escorts rather than offensively with carriers and amphibious force. These 2 decisions being reversed would enable Britain to deal with the shocks of Korea and Suez far more effectively and set Britain up for a far more greater role in world affairs from the 50s by way of alliances backed by regional arms deals dwarfing those of OTL, in part subsidising British engagement in the Med East and South East Asia.
This isn't to say Britain won't be dwarfed by the US and USSR and economically overtaken by Japan and Germany and even France, or that the RN/RM/RAFG/BAOR won't be dwarfed by various NATO and WP forces, they most certainly will. Rather Britain will posses single-digit-fractions or the only non-superpower operator of the world's or NATOs key military hardware in the 60s onwards; 1/4 of the worlds fleet carriers, worlds third largest IFR tanker fleet, worlds third largest strategic transport aircraft fleet, 1/3 of NATO's theatre strike aircraft, 1/5 of the worlds global amphibious reach, worlds third largest nuclear arsenal etc, etc etc. These things would make Britain matter in the 70s and 80s the way she used to matter in the 50s and early 60s.
This isn't to say Britain won't be dwarfed by the US and USSR and economically overtaken by Japan and Germany and even France, or that the RN/RM/RAFG/BAOR won't be dwarfed by various NATO and WP forces, they most certainly will. Rather Britain will posses single-digit-fractions or the only non-superpower operator of the world's or NATOs key military hardware in the 60s onwards; 1/4 of the worlds fleet carriers, worlds third largest IFR tanker fleet, worlds third largest strategic transport aircraft fleet, 1/3 of NATO's theatre strike aircraft, 1/5 of the worlds global amphibious reach, worlds third largest nuclear arsenal etc, etc etc. These things would make Britain matter in the 70s and 80s the way she used to matter in the 50s and early 60s.
^ Riain has a point, but again the problem with that one is the costs involved in it. Britain's flat-deck carrier fleet lasted into the late 1970s, but they never built any new ones after completing Eagle and Ark Royal no more were built for a reason, namely cost. Even if you pitch away a stack of superfluous projects and make the ones that may have work successful (TSR-2, V-1000, P.1154, et cetera) you're still looking at a huge cost to operate these as well as the amphibious groups and the escorts they would certainly demand. How do you reconcile all of the cost of that? Beyond That, even if you do that and maintain the presences in Singapore and Aden and Malta and Hong Kong (and the obvious ones of OTL - Ascension, Diego Garcia, Bermuda, Falklands) you still need units to operate out of them. This all cost money to both build and maintain. Even for a prosperous Britain, can they handle that cost?
I would raise the idea of Britain trying to use the Commonwealth as a form of support for their armed forces, but that surely would require mutual support and thus it gets tricky. Does Britain want to get caught in the masses Apartheid will cause? Or the various shitfights between India and Pakistan? I could see the White Dominions using Britain-owned bases as a way of extending their own reach, but that too runs into the issue of whether that's got use to the nations in question. Do Canada and Australia remain in the carrier aviation business? Having the Commonwealth bases linked with the Americans raises a whole nother can of worms later on, but do these places get used well otherwise?
I would raise the idea of Britain trying to use the Commonwealth as a form of support for their armed forces, but that surely would require mutual support and thus it gets tricky. Does Britain want to get caught in the masses Apartheid will cause? Or the various shitfights between India and Pakistan? I could see the White Dominions using Britain-owned bases as a way of extending their own reach, but that too runs into the issue of whether that's got use to the nations in question. Do Canada and Australia remain in the carrier aviation business? Having the Commonwealth bases linked with the Americans raises a whole nother can of worms later on, but do these places get used well otherwise?
Cost wasn't really the issue it's made out to be. The Ark Royal's Phantomisation in 1967-70 cost 32 million pounds and the Tiger's conversion to a helo cruiser cost 13 million pounds, in contrast to refit the Eagle for Phantoms would have only cost 5 million pounds. 40 million pounds would go a long way toward building CVA01, with the money spent on the 3 Invincibles making up the rest and for CVA02. They would be manned from the manpower allocation for Ark Royal Hermes, Bulwark, Blake and Tiger in the 70s and from the 3 Invincibles in the 80s, plus some extra manpower that would have to be found within the overall defence manpower cap, but at least some of that would be from the Phantom and Buccaneer squadrons that wouldn't be transferred to the RAF. As compensation the money the RN spent on developing and building the Sea Harrier from 1975 could be spent by the RAF instead.
The TSR2 is the same, the money spent chasing up a successor could have gotten it into service.
Begin instant reforms in all colonies, establish schools throughout the empire to educate natives, and give this new elite administrative and eventually legislative power. If some colonies want independence, give them it, but if reform is as smooth as possible smooth, some ex-colonies will accept dominion status with British influence and cooperation.