Ebbie- "staid old merry England"- go to any English (or Welsh) town or city on a Friday or Saturday night, and you won't see much in the way of staid. You'll see much of the young-to-middling cohort of a very unhappy society getting bladdered as fast as they can, and town centre pubs designed to screw as much profit out of their desperate merriment as possible.

The war (whatever the reality) brought Britain a sense of social cohesion and idealism, that led to the social reforms of the late 1940s. The atomisation of society that accompanied subsequent affluence has dissipated that- it was already far decayed when Thatcher gave it the coup de grace in the 80s.

As has often been said, we won the war, but lost the peace.