Britain's relative economic decline never actually stopped

I keep thinking about Tim's post earlier this week about Britain in relative decline again, much of which I wholeheartedly agree with, apart from the "again" bit.

Needless to say, lots of positives happened under Maggie, that many on all sides now readily accept. But there was no lasting transformation to higher economic growth. Britain's economic reforms in the 80s stopped us going into a more pronounced decline and lining up with Portugal, Spain and Greece instead of closing the gap with Germany and France.

And yet, that was just the problem - making favourable comparisons with even slower growing EU states in headlong decline merely served to mask the UK's relative global decline. Even now, the BBC routinely throws up comparison stats between the UK and other EU States, never the USA, Japan or even Australia.
I think there's just one metric to decide whether you are in relative economic decline or not;

Is the annual growth rate for a given country below or above the global average?

In the UK's case, using figures from the World Bank, we have exceeded world economic growth since 1961 just 10 times; in 1973, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1993, 1994, 1998 and 2001. When you compound these growth rates from 1960-2005, the UK economy has nearly tripled in size over that period, but the World Economy has quintupled.

To stop our economic decline, or at least run fast enough to hold our current position,  the UK will have to pursue polices that double the trend growth rate to about 5% per annum or more.

Well, I can't see this happening without;

i) Cutting a new deal with the EU - but not totally leaving - which allows us the flexibility to pursue a global trading agenda and recovers the powers to set and abolish our own regulations

ii) A substantial shift of resources from the Public to the Private Sector - of course this means tax cuts but they would be most responsibly combined with public sector reform and a new privatisation programme that reduces the functions of government. 

The Republic of Ireland shows us that a developed nation which pursues aggressive tax reforms and reduces public expenditure, can end decline, grow fast and prosper.

A future British government should not shy from doing at least some of the same.