Britain is challenging to play because it has three basic strategies:

1) Land-based: Build a factory in South Africa or India. It's hard to get U.K. ground units into the game except through that way.

2) Air based: Use (and build) bombers for strategic bombing, and hope to cripple the German economy. The downside is that this might not matter if Germany gets enough extra IPCs by conquering Africa. That's unless you get strategic bombing, which means spending IPCs on research.

3) Seabased: Build battleships to replace units lost in the early going, and sweep the seas of Axis shipping, to provide support for American land and air operations in the Mediterranean. 

None of these strategies is totally compelling, meaning that fate depends largely on Russia and the U.S. UK is arguably the hardest country to play: Lots of IPCs to start, but hard to come to grips with the enemy.

And see my piece on the "Kwabang" attack. The British player will suffer even if it SUCCEEDS. In most cases, it's a "sucker" play.