Perhaps we should admit it outright, we're just unpatriotic

According to Polly Toynbee we're unpatriotic:

Patriotism – pride in the country – is undermined by every failure in the public realm. Since 2010, this government and its coalition predecessor have followed an ideology of cuts, intent on reducing the state to a pitiful 36% of GDP, far below any equivalent EU country. Leadsom, hear this: shrinking the state is the opposite of patriotism – a betrayal of country and people.

The EU country which is perhaps most equivalent to us - we share language, the Common Law and an awful lot of often fractious history - is Ireland which has a smaller state than we do and is also about as rich (no, ignore GDP here, we must use GNP). Of the OECD countries Switzerland is richer, also has a smaller state. That's probably because of he postcode lottery that Polly so bitterly decries. The central state at Berne deals with the peace, easy taxes and tolerable justice bit, everything else is done by the cantons in myriad different manners.

So it's at least not obvious that shrinking the state is such a bad idea.

But then the idea that patriotism is defined by the size of the state in the first place is trivially stupid, isn't it? We're entirely fine with the idea that how well the place is governed can be related to how patriotic we all are, but the idea that the amount of money defines it is ludicrous.

But then, you know, Polly. She always has insisted that it's not how we spend the money that matters, it's feel the width, see how much we are.