The UK with Brexit are starting to find out very quickly how insignificant their nation is and how easy it is to route around the oversized egos of their so-called leaders.
Most governments deserve a good helping of scorn including my own, despite our best efforts to persuade them otherwise. I find most people in the UK quite agreeable. I recommend not taking criticism against your government personally.
While I’m glad the rather embarrassing empire thing is on the wane I really don’t see how that is relevant here.
The UK isn’t trying to tell anybody what they can do in any other country. It’s just laying down the law for what happens within its own borders which it’s entirely within its rights to do.
Equally why you would think an American company could or should tell the British government what to do is surely itself an example of empiricism is it not?
It is not that the UK can’t set the rules for their own country; it is just that they need Microsoft and Apple more than Microsoft and Apple need them and so the government has little leverage here.
Further, they aren’t large enough to block the deal so they will only make things worse for their own citizens as it will just deny citizen access to certain products and services or create or otherwise cause companies pull out of the market causing businesses and citizens to look for sun par alternatives.
Apple and Microsoft can’t tell the UK government what to to, but the power dynamic is still what it is and the reality of what blocking the deal will actually accomplish is still the reality.
Their (former) empire is a part of their cultural identity. It's going to take a few more generations to shed the expectations of what was.
The days of two washed-up subjects of the crown taking Kafiristan all on their lonesome are dead and gone.