AHC/WI: UK (sans Empire) as the 3rd Superpower

Other threads have popped up before with a similar idea of the British Empire being the third Superpower between the US and Russia/China, but the idea in this AHC/WI is that the United Kingdom much as it stands today is the 3rd superpower. It can retain some colonies like Hong Kong or Singapore, but none of the large Dominions. Try to keep some things similar to OTL World, as much as that can be possible.
 
Other threads have popped up before with a similar idea of the British Empire being the third Superpower between the US and Russia/China, but the idea in this AHC/WI is that the United Kingdom much as it stands today is the 3rd superpower. It can retain some colonies like Hong Kong or Singapore, but none of the large Dominions. Try to keep some things similar to OTL World, as much as that can be possible.

How could the UK virtually alone ever match the other two powers?
 
UK led Europe as a superpower, sure it's doable

OR

UK leading it's empire as a superpowe, again doable.

But

UK on its own, not a chance. Too low a population and too much war debts from ww2 and too much reconstruction from ww2 needed.

Sorry Vega, no chance.
 
UK led Europe as a superpower, sure it's doable

OR

UK leading it's empire as a superpowe, again doable.

But

UK on its own, not a chance. Too low a population and too much war debts from ww2 and too much reconstruction from ww2 needed.

Sorry Vega, no chance.

What do you think about your first option? Do you have any ideas on how that could happen?
 

Deleted member 97083

What do you think about your first option? Do you have any ideas on how that could happen?
USA remains isolationist. Britain lets Germany and the USSR destroy each other for as long as possible, then launches D-Day on its own when Germany is utterly exhausted by the Soviets.
 
What do you think about your first option? Do you have any ideas on how that could happen?

Just some ideas not a fleshed out timeline.

First of all Britain during ww2 needs a clearer guarantee regarding the status of the manhatten project. The original deal where Canada and the UK were full partners in the project and would get access to the results would have worked out but the Brits needs to have an early independent nuclear deterrent.

Britain comes out of the war with nukes and slightly more independent policy.

The European Coal and Steel Pact becomes a slightly more of a Western Allies club with Britain joining or the council of Europe becomes a the original EU, I'm not sure which.

Britain won't be seen as Americas foot in the door since it has a separate nuclear deterrenthe and more independent foreign policy.

France probably develops nuclear weapons with British rather than American aid or Britain serves as Europe's nuclear defence in return for leadership of the European Union.

Decolonisation happens although some smaller areas (Newfoundland, Malta remain attached).

European integration happens and Britain is intent on taking a leadership role.

NATO doesn't happen but the European Union includes significant defense provisions.
 
For many, many reasons it's highly improbable but, if the UK did what Japan did post WWII it would be a superpower, or at least for much of the 70s, 80s and 90s would have approached that status.

One big reason it is so improbable is that WWII actually helped Japan in this regard. The war so destroyed it, not just physical infrastructure but more importantly its government, business and social infrastructure that it basically had to start from scratch. Sometimes its easier to start fresh than make incremental improvements subject to the disapproval of many different parties protecting their own self interest.

One obvious way to improve its position would have been for it to benefit more from technology R&D spending performed during the war. Silicon Valley, specifically Hewlett Packard, started with defense related activities. I believe Fairchild Semiconductor, which brought together the future founders of Intel as well as several other companies in the region, started off doing a lot of work defense related work. I dont know of any reasons why the British could not have rivaled early Silicon Valley in the 50s and 60s at least, potentially leading to much strong technology industry.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
This would require a POD of 1918-1923, because ww1 lessons would be crucial. There were lots of things that should have been done during the interbellum, including:

- Land reform and LVT, combining with state-backed credit facilities for farmers and state-assisted cooperative marketing to develop agriculture. LVT would also encourage productive investments by help reducing ground rents.

- Solving industrial unrest between workers and owners (either based on Mond-Turner talk or Britain's Industrial Future).

- Limiting Geddes Axe, at least Education Budget must be safeguarded. Education is the key for national development. After that, raise school leaving age, expand university and technical education, and forge a link between schools and industries.

- Public work programs to improve national infrastructures, especially electricity supply, railway electrification, telephone system, roads, housing and slump clearance. After ww1, Britain seriously lagged in these aspects. These would also help solve the mass unemployment problem in the North and boost national economic growth either directly or indirectly.

- No return to prewar Gold Standard.

- Rationalizing and modernizing of staple industries in the North, especially textile, coal and shipbuilding via tax and subsidy incentives.

- A National Investment Board to control and facilitate domestic investments by channeling funds to industries and National Development schemes. Capital should be directed to domestic investments rather than be allowed to flow to places like USA or South America.

- No appeasement of all kinds. This would butterfly away OTL ww2 (it would be a quick war instead).

For post 1940:
- Develop a strong link between military and civilian R&D like in the US. Allowing military tech to freely spill over civil industrial sectors.

- More efficient military spending.

- Nurture the computer, jet, life science and nuclear industries via subsidies, government orders and export discipline (with a bigger emphasis on exports to Europe) (the third one is crucial to prevent businesses from abusing subsidies and hiding behind protection, as well as to force them to continuously improve themselves since international market would be less forgiving). Encourage ICI style M&A to allow these industries to take advantage of economies of scale (not some kind of forced merges like IOTL).

- Computers should be quickly introduced in various civilian government tasks, first for those that relate to statistics and numbers, as soon as the war ends.

- Sending ODA to less developed countries and dominions like India, Eastern European countries, South East Asia... ODA for infrastructure development would include clauses that require using British equipment and components. This strategy would help strangle Britain's potential competitors in these areas from the beginning, while also generate export orders for British firms.

- Demanding foreign MNCs to open R&D facilities or to sell their technology at a low price if they want to invest in the UK, so that Britain would benefit from foreign technology (beg, borrow and steal).
 
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