He is alive and well at the Circus Tavern, whose car park is filled with fat BMWs. For them, representation is little more than oppression. “You don’t see a white family in the commercials any more,” says Mr Davidson. “No,” shout the crowd in agreement. Nineties nostalgia hangs over politics. The Labour Party longs for a return to when the party and Britain’s cultural icons were in sync, as they were in the 1990s, rather than regarded with contempt by the Groucho class, as they are now. “I remember the night Tony Blair got in and everybody’s singing, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, and we really believed it,” recalled the artist Tracey Emin, wistfully, in “Faster Than A Cannonball”. At the Circus Tavern, politics and culture are comfortably fused. Mr Davidson turns the set into a rally for Reform UK, the right-wing populist party that is now leading in the polls. He begins to sing “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” to the tune of “Seven Nation Army”. An audience where every other man looks like Lee Anderson, a spiky-haired miner-turned-mascot of Reform, soon joins in. Hang on. That is Lee Anderson. The Reform mp has driven three hours to be at Mr Davidson’s show. In the 1990s old hierarchies were knocked down, says the director of Tate Britain, Alex Farquharson. Mr Davidson’s career in prime time, which began in the 1970s and peaked in the 1990s, dwindled in the 2000s. “The Generation Game” was cancelled in 2002; “Big Break” followed. But new hierarchies were created. Ms Emin, once an enfant terrible, became Dame Tracey; her work “I Want My Time With You”, in neon pink, welcomes visitors from Paris to St Pancras in London, after they have zipped along the high-speed rail line that runs above the trundling service from London to Purfleet. “As it panned out we became the establishment,” said Noel Gallagher of Oasis, the decade’s biggest band, who have just had a lucrative reunion. “And I didn’t really like that.” Nor it seems did the crowd at the Circus Tavern. “We want our country back,” says Mr Davidson. The crowd agree. For that, they want the 1990s back, too. A world of “men straight off the pink bus” and African accents and Mr Davidson back on telly rather than next to a lorry park in Essex. Rather than something new, Reform is offering a return, cheered on by Mr Davidson. Nineties nostalgia has set like cement in two very different parts
of Britain. In both venues, 50-somethings agree that things were better when they were in their 20s. At the Groucho, Mr Enninful says the 1990s is “something still unfolding”. And so it is. From Soho to Purfleet, everybody still wants to live in the 1990s. But which bit? ■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/05/07/one-decade-two-britains
American subs rule beneath the waves, but China’s are catching up America must hope Donald Trump is not a new Caligula
American subs rule beneath the waves, but China’s are catching up And underwater drones may supplant them all May 7th 2026 THE NETS enclosing the inner harbour draw open. A black-finned predator slips out. Minutes later it reaches the open ocean and, with a great exhalation, disappears beneath the tropical waters. Getting under way from Apra Harbour in Guam, the USS Annapolis, one of the ocean’s apex hunters, is engaged in a silent but intensifying contest with China and Russia for dominance of the vast Pacific. Warships are noisy, rumbling along like lorries. Not so a nuclear-powered attack submarine, which hums like a Tesla. For months on end the Annapolis’s crew of 145 men (and, when your correspondent visited, one woman) inhabit a surreal world of artificial light and recycled air, largely
incommunicado—a windowless spaceship arcing through suffocating blackness. Nuclear propulsion means that the main limit on a voyage is neither fuel nor air nor fresh water, but food. These marvels of engineering thus set out like an overloaded caravan, with bananas hanging from pipework and jars of peanut butter shoved between the padding of seats. Fathoms under water, the galley bakes bread daily, turning compact flour into fluffy rolls. Just keeping sailors alive inside a hull squeezed by 24 or more atmospheres of pressure is a feat. “Every single ounce of seawater is trying to kill us, every second,” says the captain, Commander Clinton Emrich. The sub is officially able to dive more than 240 metres and zip along at more than 25 knots (the real numbers are secret and probably much higher). It is armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Mark-48 torpedoes, sea-mines and perhaps other weapons. In the war with Iran, American subs fired Tomahawks at targets on land and, for the first time since the second world war, a torpedo at an enemy ship, sinking an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena. Attack submarines operating from Guam, including both Los Angeles-class vessels like the Annapolis (in service for 34 years) and newer Virginia-class ones, are the “tip of the spear”, American submariners say. In any future war with China they would be counted upon to deliver some of the earliest and
heaviest blows. In the meantime their tasks range from tracking foes’ ballistic-missile submarines to gathering intelligence and inserting special forces. Above all, their main job is deterrence. One might pop up unexpectedly off Australia or South Korea. Or one might surface close to a Chinese warship in a show of stealthiness—or perhaps several might appear simultaneously near different Chinese vessels. The ocean depth is the last domain where America still has a clear military advantage over China. As battlefields fill with sensors, becoming increasingly transparent, “being under water matters because it’s one of the last places you can hide,” says Thomas Shugart, a former submariner. Yet America’s sub-sea dominion, too, is under threat. The “silent service” says little about each side’s capabilities, but American submariners talk of roaming the Pacific almost as if it were an American lake. Until recently they joked that Chinese subs were so noisy they could be heard from America’s west coast. No longer: mockery is turning to alarm. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, having built the world’s largest surface navy and its fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, is also transforming China’s submarine force. The current fleet consists mostly of conventionally powered vessels, with limited speed and endurance, useful mainly to attack shipping close to home. However, over the coming decade or so, American intelligence reckons, a new generation of nuclear-powered, ocean-going subs will come to dominate China’s force, challenging American supremacy in the Pacific and Indian oceans, the approaches to the Arctic and perhaps even the Atlantic. American military sources say China is developing much quieter submarines with the help of Russian technology, whether stolen or bartered in exchange for China’s support for Russia’s stuttering war in Ukraine. China’s latest models “are formidable, incorporating advanced technologies that challenge the US Navy’s long-standing undersea dominance”, said Vice Admiral Richard Seif, the commander of America’s submarine force, in recent testimony. America’s head of naval intelligence, Rear Admiral Michael Brookes, thinks China will have 70 submarines next year and 80 by 2035. Crucially, about
40 will be nuclear-powered—substantially more than previously estimated. This compares with America’s all-nuclear force of 67 boats. To stay ahead, America is supplying nuclear-propulsion technology to Australia under AUKUS, a submarine-building partnership that also includes Britain. The AUKUS boats are not due for delivery until the 2040s. In the meantime America has promised to sell Australia three to five Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s. Australian sailors are already training on American subs, which are set to begin regular deployments from a base near Perth next year. China’s loud protests suggest alarm. Meanwhile, America and South Korea agreed last year to build new “hunter- killer” subs (SSNs) together, though the details of how and where they will be built remain sketchy. Hanwha, a South Korean conglomerate, is developing a new “smart” shipyard in Philadelphia that, it hopes, could become a site for submarine construction. Japan, too, has shown interest. America’s submarine-building, though, is being hampered by its woeful industrial capacity. America and Australia have invested billions in America’s submarine industrial base. “Build Submarines” ads shown during big sporting events have urged young Americans to train as welders and other roles. Even so, America is falling short of its requirement to build two