Why Hood's loss is not the start date of imperial decline

Can the loss of Hood at the Battle of the Denmark Strait be treated as the beginning of the end of the British Empire?

No; the panel calls that a retrospective milestone imposed on a much longer process whose origins are better traced across decades.

The panel regards the link between Hood's loss and the beginning of imperial collapse as a postwar interpretation. Large historical transitions begin as scattered discussions and pressures before becoming coherent policy, so decade-scale dating is more honest than assigning a single dramatic event. Hood's symbolic weight can otherwise encourage an overly tidy periodization.