[Paul Ross]

Chicken or egg is confused by your author. It's a good thing you posted this revisionist history...by Bruce Bartlett, who not quite as serious as you seem to think:

"The abandonment of free trade during World War I coincided with the beginning of Great Britain’s economic decline. Freedom to trade had been the strongest pillar of Britain’s general free-market policy. When that pillar fell, the doorway opened to socialist measures of all kinds. British history in the 20th century is essentially one of almost continually expanding government control of the economy, and an equal decline in Great Britain’s power and influence in world affairs."

The evidence is definitive that the decline wasn't caused by abandonment of free trade policies...but had already happened while the British were fully under the sway of free trade zealots who infested the bureaucracy...and when the evidence came that the UK's industrial infrastructure was being seriously wounded by predator nations, they did start shifting gears at the turn of the century...but they didn't fully implement an industrial restoration policy until they were already in the midst of WW-I. And it was seriously compromised by the dependancies that the zealots had blithely promoted as "strengths." The decline was caused by predators isolating industries as targets of opportunity, and then denying Great Britain its broad mass markets. Great Britain lost its economies of scale previously enjoyed. At this point, they were already a "Dead Industrial Empire Walking." The belated, and fitful modest implementations of protections were "too little, too late."

[Mase]

The evidence is definitive that the decline wasn't caused by abandonment of free trade policies...but had already happened while the British were fully under the sway of free trade zealots who infested the bureaucracy..

Nice tap dance. Let's look at how badly that sway of free trade impacted the British economy before the protectionist zealots killed the economy. This is from historian Paul Kennedy (PhD from Oxford and author of The Rise and Fall of Great Powers).

"Between 1760 and 1830, the United Kingdom was responsible for around two-thirds of Europe’s industrial growth of output, and its share of world manufacturing production leaped from 1.9 to 9.5 percent; in the next thirty years, British industrial expansion pushed that figure to 19.9 percent, despite the spread of new technology to other countries in the West. Around 1860, which was probably when the country reached its zenith in relative terms, the United Kingdom produced 53 percent of the world’s iron and 50 percent of its coal and lignite, and consumed just under half of the raw cotton output of the globe. With 2 percent of the world’s population and 10 percent of Europe’s, the United Kingdom would seem to have had a capacity in modern industries equal to 40-45 percent of the world’s potential and 55-60 percent of that in Europe. . . . It alone was responsible for one-fifth of the world’s commerce, but for two-thirds of the trade in manufactured goods. Over one-third of the world’s merchant marine flew under the British flag, and that share was steadily increasing. It was no surprise that the mid-Victorians exulted at their unique state, being now . . . the trading center of the universe."

Yeah, all that free trade was just killing them before they became of bunch of ignorant protectionists. If Thatcher and her free market reforms hadn't saved them, they'd still be the basket case of Europe.