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United
Kingdom
As the
dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century,
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland played a leading
role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing
literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire
stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first
half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted
in two World Wars and the Irish republic withdraw from the
union. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire
and the UK rebuilding itself into a modern and prosperous
European nation. As one of five permanent members of the UN
Security Council, a founding member of NATO, and of the Commonwealth,
the UK pursues a global approach to foreign policy; it currently
is weighing the degree of its integration with continental
Europe. A member of the EU, it chose to remain outside the
Economic and Monetary Union for the time being. Constitutional
reform is also a significant issue in the UK. The Scottish
Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern
Ireland Assembly were established in 1999, but the latter
was suspended until May 2007 due to wrangling over the peace
process.
The UK,
a leading trading power and financial center, is one of the
quintet of trillion dollar economies of Western Europe. Over
the past two decades, the government has greatly reduced public
ownership and contained the growth of social welfare programs.
Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanized, and efficient
by European standards, producing about 60% of food needs with
less than 2% of the labor force. The UK has large coal, natural
gas, and oil resources, but its oil and natural gas reserves
are declining and the UK became a net importer of energy in
2005; energy industries now contribute about 4% to GDP. Services,
particularly banking, insurance, and business services, account
by far for the largest proportion of GDP while industry continues
to decline in importance. Since emerging from recession in
1992, Britain's economy enjoyed the longest period of expansion
on record during which time growth outpaced most of Western
Europe. The global economic slowdown, tight credit, and falling
home prices, however, pushed Britain back into recession in
the latter half of 2008 and prompted the BROWN government
to implement a number of new measures to stimulate the economy
and stabilize the financial markets; these include part-nationalizing
the banking system, cutting taxes, suspending public sector
borrowing rules, and bringing forward public spending on capital
projects. The Bank of England periodically coordinates interest
rate moves with the European Central Bank, but Britain remains
outside the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and
opinion polls show a majority of Britons oppose joining the
euro.
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