Pity the middle-sized nations of the world

NOTICE that it isn’t the prime minister of Greece or Lithuania that Elon Musk is tormenting. The stakes would not be high enough for him. Nor has he posted mean things on X about the leaders of China. There is too much to lose in that colossal market.

No, it is Britain, like Germany, that is optimally sized for an intervention: countries big enough to arouse general interest, but not so big as to make or break a plutocrat’s fortunes. Their middling status is what exposes them to the rocket man’s curiosity (which appears to have wandered somewhat from procurement reform in Washington).

In other words, the problem here is that Britain is exactly the wrong size. And this wouldn’t be the first time. Perhaps one of the worst handicaps a nation can have in this century is medium scale.