The United Kingdom's main strengths and weaknesses The UK's main strengths are seen to lie in our economy and institutions, our main weaknesses in our human qualities and social relations.
Tradition emerges as both a major asset and as our principal liability.
The unprompted responses given to these paired questions were broadly in line with replies that we collected in 13 other countries in 1999. Once again tradition emerged as both one of our chief strengths and as our main weakness. This was especially true in Japan and Korea. A similar division of opinion was apparent in the Czech Republic, Italy and Singapore. That said, in most countries more people viewed UK tradition negatively than positively.