I would say the UK because it was the single most dominant superpower that there has ever been at any point in history, and at a time of rampant globalisation. And in addition to that it gave the world the modern day superpower - the USA.

You could maybe even argue that the USA is truer to British values than Britain. Heck the USA was born from a rebellion that was out of loyalty to a distinctly British strain of values and political thought at a time when the British state was itself trampling on them.

I would also suggest that Britain's predisposition towards more moderate and stable forms of government has allowed its political ideals to have a bigger impact on the world today than those of the much more reactionary and radical French.

I mean, Locke laid the foundations for modern day liberal democracy which is so dominant that some people consider it to be the "end of history" (although I don't personally agree with that). Whereas the likes of Rousseau seem to have created more of a framework for the totalitarianism of the last century.

Of course this could be interpreted as my own bias as a Briton and dismissed as hubris. Of course my country v your country debates are often silly, but I think the reason for what I have written above is due to Britain's quite unique, isolated geoplitical situation.

I would also ask Strike in what way is Scotland like Alabama, and remind him that Northern Ireland exists. Of course, he is right that nobody cares about the Welsh. Nothing interesting happens there, they haven't really contributed anything to the world.