Sceptics have long argued that the UK is past its peak and trading largely on former glories. They point to the country’s middling rankings in the education scores of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment, the fact that only one British firm, HSBC, is among the world’s 50 largest public corporations, compared to Germany’s four, and the likelihood that Brexit will ultimately erode, rather than boost, Britain’s global standing.

But I disagree with this judgment. After all, the UK is one of only a handful of countries to have produced an effective Covid-19 vaccine in record time. It remains at the forefront of shaping the global green-energy transition and it was the first major economy to enact legislation requiring it to end its contribution to global warming by 2050.