It’s not based on tourism, it’s based on services, which includes tourism but isn’t dominated by it.
But regardless, it’s exactly because it’s hard to define relevance that I was challenging the original comment, which said, without explaining what it meant by this, that the U.K. is no longer relevant.
Regardless of your feelings about this Apple issue, it just seems like an absurd thing to say about a country that’s a large economy (even if wealth is concentrated in one region), has decent cultural exports, is a nuclear power, sits on the UN Security Council, etc.
It’s exactly because it can throw its weight around with Apple, and people are treating it seriously, that it clearly is relevant. If it was some tiny nation doing it, it would just provoke amusement.
True, imo the UK is very relevant in many aspects - for me it’s mostly in terms of culture. I think much of this is due to the empire and them colonising a major part of the world.
But just as an aside on your last point - I think it’s actually pretty amusing that they think they could force a backdoor on apple…