I don't understand why people are still saying UK is friendly to beginners. It's not like the old days when top ship level was 70-80-ish and Nelson had 14*4L blockshot whose range was a little shorter than othe nations.
Given the typical range shortage of UK, I won't say it's beginner-friendly any more. Before you can hit others in GB with at-level crew, you're probably pwn-ed by BB4-5-6 from all other nations, no matter how much armor you put on.
(Although, technically, there is one exception: if you use King George V, you can put on lots of deck armor and you can probably survive quite a few salvos from other BBs. However, this situation only applies when you use 15*2*3 main gun setup which means, with at-level crew, you can't do much damage to your enemies because 1) 15*2 gun's spread is horrible with at-level crew and 2) 15*2*3 has little firepower, which means a slow grind in GB anyways)
As a beginner, I would recommend you to play Italy because:
1) Italian ships are so freeking small that it's very, very, very, very difficult for any ship to one-shot you
2) Italian has low gun angles which means less hangtime in the air, which means advantage in both rushing and run-gunning
3) Italian shells have above-average shell damage and average range.
4) Italian has EOC guns you can use in leveling in Blitz, which I consider as bug guns because these guns have reload time of an FF gun + shell damage of a CA gun (or even BB gun) + range of a CA gun (or even BB gun).
5) Take a look at the size of Italian CL Romani. Isn't it ridiculous that it has FF size but also more damage point than many other CAs? SDE designed it this way because SDE begs you to play Italy.