Great Britain. I love this country, but with the whiff of the General Election in the air, I'm looking at the state of it, and it can't be blamed on one political party.
But many of the great institutions that made this country great are crumbling before my very eyes.
Britain pretty much colonised the world. Whether you view this as a good or bad thing, we created an empire. We were a superpower. Innovators in the world of shipbuilding and aviation. We had an army to die for. But look at us now.
And please, before you say Brexit, we did all of that and we didn't even have an EU then.
Now many countries, namely the US, no longer see us as a leading military power. Can you blame them? We can't even call our army and army because we have so few soldiers.
This once great institution is falling apart before our very eyes. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford, who served in the army for 20 years and often appears on my show, called our Tank Fleet embarrassingly small and that it would be wiped out in two weeks in a war with Russia.
He warned that our armed forces are no longer regarded as a tier one military power by the US. It's embarrassing. He also pointed out the decline in the equipment, like the number of battle tanks the Army are planning to purchase 148, but in Ukraine, the Russians, well, they've roughly lost about 3000 over the last two years. How does that honestly compare?
Even the monarchy, one of the most stable institutions in this country, and indeed the world, is in a tough predicament. Another thing that puts the great in Great Britain, both the King and Catherine have cancer.
Catherine is to be the next Queen. We need her. Meghan and Harry are taking pot shots from the sidelines, having chosen to step down and going on four royal tours. Ghana is apparently next on their list. And within the household itself, there are very few working royals left.
Prince Andrew was forced to step down over his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. There was a whole Virginia book of free stuff, which he's denied all charges and was not found guilty of anything but shelled out a load of cash for the optics really weren't good.
Since that interview with Emily Maitlis, things have just gone from bad to worse for Andrew. Apparently, the King now wants him to move out of the 30 bedroom Royal Lodge, which he shares with his ex Sarah Ferguson, and into Frogmore Cottage, where Meghan and Harry used to live. Ironically, whilst Andrew is fighting to stay as a working royal, those two chucked it all away and Andrew has been told to downsize.
Other institutions, like the NHS, wants the envy of the rest of the world has now become something to avoid, as schools and colleges once considered the diamond standard that many countries would try to emulate now being overtaken.
And as for our political parties, which another world ago had leaders love them or hate them like Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady and Tony Blair, who could sell snow to the Eskimos. We've got lacklustre charisma as politicians who changed their mind with the wind.
The political elites have made a mockery of this country over the past few decades, and whoever gets elected has a serious job on their hands. Good luck with that.
