Posted on 05/21/2019 12:42:53 PM PDT by KC_Lion
Britain ceased being an imperial state a long time ago, but it is better to be a sovereign, independent minor power than a mere province in a mighty empire. Imperial subjects, even those who live in the ‘core’ state, rarely have much power over their own governments and Disraeli-style talk of dazzling imperial grandure and power on the world stage is a way of distracting the ordinary people from this fact.
Britain ceased being an imperial state in reality but in mentality it remained an imperial state. That was apparent also in the negotiations.
As to being a sovereign minor power - yes, that’s fine, but it would mean giving up the earliest “colonies” like Scotland and maybe even Wales (though I doubt the latter)
You are correct in a way about how different parts of the country fared under the British Empire, but it is no doubt that hte UK as a whole turned from a gin-soaked, second rate, poor country in the early 1600s into a powerful super-state by 1800
“There was a vote of no-confidence called for in December. The “get er out” side lost, so as per the rules they need to wait until December 2019 to try again”
Or they can change the rules. Let’s not pretend that it’s internal rules propping her up.
Scotland has never been a colony of England. It pretty much forced the Union on England by threatening to bring the Jacobite heirs to the Scottish throne and allying itself with France and threatening her national security, extorting money from England as a bribe to join the Union. England didn’t actually want to share her markets with the Scots. Scotland actually did better out of the Union than England did. The only benefit England received is the security of her northern flank from imported continental enemy armies, a factor that is utterly irrelevent now. Even now, if Scotland left, England would benefit from losing a money pit that is net dependent on English taxpayer’s subsidy, same with Northern Ireland (same with Wales incidently but they’re not daft enough to have anything like a significant constituency in support of independence). The majority of Britons don’t give a damn about Britain being some kind of world superpower, that is a conceit of the elite, which is why they are so pro-EU because it gives them the means to strut on the world stage as an equal to the US and China. The people just want power over our own rulers and to look to ourselves. The EUro-fanatics are welcome to their imperialist willy waving. I’m sure you can appreciate as a Pole that it is better to have control over who rules you than having some false sense of power at being a subject of a superpower over whose government your power is virtually nothing.
That’s why the inverted commas
And I may be a dual polish citizen but I’m not polish by blood. I do feel for it’s history yes and that’s why I wouldn’t want it to be part of a place where it has no say - yet that’s not the EU today. Poland can and does have a say in the EU
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